Russian, Ukraine-themed war lure of choice for cyber espionage

Russian and Ukraine-themed war documents have become the lure of choice for cyber espionage, according to a new analysis from Check Point Research.

Check Point Research, the threat intelligence arm of Check Point Software, has named three APT groups, named El Machete, Lyceum and SideWinder, found to be running spear-phishing campaigns in five countries.

CPR counts victims in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Victims identified span government, financial and energy sectors.

The cybersecurity firm continues to see a rise in overall cyberattacks on both Ukraine and Russia, +39% and +22% respectively, since the beginning of war

According to CPR, the attackers used decoys ranging from official-looking documents, to news articles and job postings. After examining the lure documents, CPR found malware capable of keylogging, screenshotting and executing commands.

CPR believes the motivation behind these recent cyber espionage campaigns is to steal sensitive information from governments, banks, and energy companies.

"Right now, we are seeing a variety of APT campaigns that utilises the current war for malware distribution," says Sergey Shykevich, threat ontelligence group manager at Check Point Software.

"The campaigns are highly targeted and sophisticated, focusing on victims in the government, financial and energy sectors. In our newest report, we profile and bring examples from three different APT groups, who all originate in different parts of the world, that we caught orchestrating these spear-phishing campaigns," he says.

"We studied the malware involved closely, and found capabilities that span keylogging, screenshotting and more. It is my strong belief that these campaigns are designed with the core motivation of cyber espionage," Shykevich says.

"Our findings reveal a clear trend, that collateral around the war between Russia and Ukraine has become a lure of choice for threat groups world-wide," he adds.

"I strongly recommend governments, banks and energy companies to reiterate cyber awareness and education to employees, and to implement cybersecurity solutions that protect the network on all levels.

Malware Capabilities

CPR studied the malware laced by each of the three APT groups, specifically for these cyber espionage activities. Capabilities include:

• Keylogging: steals everything you enter using the keyboard 
• Credential collection: collects credentials stored in Chrome and Firefox browsers
• File collection: collects information about the files on each drive and collect file names and file sizes, allowing theft of specific files
• Screenshotting
• Clipboard data collection
• Command execution

Attack Methodologies

El Machete

Spear-phishing email with text about Ukraine
Attached Word document with article about Ukraine
Malicious macro inside the document drops a sequence of files
Malware downloaded to the PC
 
Lyceum

Email with content about war crimes in Ukraine and link to malicious document hosted on a website
The document executes a macro code when the document is closed
Exe file is saved to the PC
Next time you restart your PC the malware runs
 
SideWinder

Malicious document is opened by the victim
When it's opened, the document retrieves a remote template from an actor-controlled server
The external template that's downloaded is an RTF file, that exploits the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability
Malware on the PC of the victim

According to CPR, El Machete was spotted sending spear-phishing emails to financial organisations in Nicaragua, with an attached Word document titled "Dark plans of the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine." The document contained an article written and published by Alexander Khokholikov, the Russian ambassador to Nicaragua that discussed the Russo-Ukrainian conflict from the perspective of the Kremlin.

In mid-March, an Israeli energy company received an email from the address inews-reporter@protonmail[.]com with the subject "Russian war crimes in Ukraine." The email contained a few pictures taken from public media sources and contained a link to an article hosted on the news-spot[.]live domain. The link in the email leads to a document which contains the article "Researchers gather evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine" published by The Guardian. The same domain hosts a few more malicious documents related Russia as well as the Russia-Ukraine war, such as a copy of an article by The Atlantic Council from 2020 on Russian nuclear weapons, and a job posting for an "Extraction / Protective Agent" agent in Ukraine.

CPR says SideWinder's malicious document, which also exploits the Russia-Ukraine war, was uploaded to VirusTotal in mid-March. Judging by its content, the intended targets are Pakistani entities; the bait document contains the document of the National Institute of Maritime Affairs of Bahria University in Islamabad, and is titled "Focused talk on Russian Ukraine Conflict Impact on Pakistan." This malicious document uses remote template injection. When it's opened, the document retrieves a remote template from an actor-controlled server.

Latest Overall Cyber Attack Numbers on Ukraine, Russia and NATO Countries

Recently, Check Point Research (CPR) released an update on cyberattack trends throughout the current Russia-Ukraine war. One month after the war started on 24th February 2022, both Russia and Ukraine saw increases in cyber-attacks of 10% and 17% respectively. CPR has also observed a 16% increase in cyber-attacks globally throughout the current conflict. CPR shared cyber-attack data for NATO countries, regions and more here.