Ukraine CERT-UA warns of new attacks launched by Russia-linked Armageddon APT

Ukraine Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) reported a phishing campaign conducted by Armageddon APT using GammaLoad.PS1_v2 malware.

Ukraine Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) reported a phishing campaign using messages with subject “On revenge in Kherson!” and containing the “Plan Kherson.htm” attachment.

The HTM-file will decode and create an archive named “Herson.rar”, which contains a file-shortcut named “Plan of approach and planting explosives on the objects of critical infrastructure of Kherson.lnk”.

Upon clicking on the link file, the HTA-file “precarious.xml” is loaded and executed leading to the creation and execution of files “desktop.txt” and “user.txt”.

In the last stage of the attack chain, the GammaLoad.PS1_v2 malware is downloaded and executed on the victim’s computer.

The government experts attributes the attack to the Russia-linked Armageddon APT (UAC-0010) (aka Gamaredon, Primitive Bear, Armageddon, Winterflounder, or Iron Tilden) which was involved in a long string of attacks against the local state organizations.

“As a result, the malicious program GammaLoad.PS1_v2 will be downloaded to the computer (the mechanism of taking a screenshot and sending it to the management server has been implemented).” reads the advisory published by CERT-UA. “The activity is carried out by the group UAC-0010 (Armageddon).”

The Ukrainian CERT shared the indicators of compromise (IoCs) for this campaign.

Please vote for Security Affairs as the best European Cybersecurity Blogger Awards 2022 – VOTE FOR YOUR WINNERS
Vote for me in the sections “The Underdogs – Best Personal (non-commercial) Security Blog” and “The Tech Whizz – Best Technical Blog” and others of your choice.
To nominate, please visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfxxrxICiMZ9QM9iiPuMQIC-IoM-NpQMOsFZnJXrBQRYJGCOw/viewform

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

[adrotate banner=”9″]

[adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CERT-UA)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.