APT

Russia-linked APT29 abuses EU information exchange systems in recent attacks

Russia-linked APT29 group abused the legitimate information exchange systems used by European countries to target government entities.

Russia-linked APT29 (aka SVR groupCozy BearNobelium, and The Dukes) was spotted abusing the legitimate information exchange systems used by European countries in attacks aimed at governments.

In early March, BlackBerry researchers uncovered a new cyber espionage campaign aimed at EU countries. The hackers targeted diplomatic entities and systems transmitting sensitive information about the region’s politics, aiding Ukrainian citizens fleeing the country, and providing help to the government of Ukraine.

The attack chain commences with a spear-phishing email containing a weaponized document, which contains a link leading to the download of an HTML file.

The HTLM files are hosted on a legitimate online library website that was likely compromised by the threat actors sometime between the end of January 2023 and the beginning of February 2023.

“One of the lures appeals to those who want to find out the Poland Ambassador’s schedule for 2023. It overlaps with Ambassador Marek Magierowski’s recent visit to the United Statesp; specifically, his talk on February 2, where he discussed the war in Ukraine at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, also known as the Catholic Law, which is based in Washington, DC.” reads the analysis published by BlackBerry.

The APT29 group also abused multiple legitimate systems, including LegisWrite and eTrustEx, which are used by EU nations for exchanging info and data in a secure way.

LegisWrite is an editing program used by governments within the European Union, this means that threat actors used it in the malicious lure to target state organizations within the EU specifically.

The malicious HTML file employed in the attack is a version of NOBELIUM’s dropper tracked as ROOTSAW (aka EnvyScout). EnvyScout uses the HTML smuggling technique to deliver an IMG or ISO file to the victim’s system.

To maintain persistence, a new registry key is created under “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\DsDiBacks”.

The BugSplatRc64.dll file allows cyber spies to collect and exfiltrate information about the infected system.

The nation-state actor abuses the API the note-taking application Notion for C2 communication, a choice that allows avoiding detection.

“NOBELIUM actively collects intelligence information about the countries supporting Ukraine in the Russian-Ukraine war. The overlap between Poland’s Ambassador’s visit to the United States with the lure used in the attacks, provides evidence that the threat actors carefully follow geopolitical events and use them to increase their possibility of a successful infection.” concludes the report. “Furthermore, our initial analysis of weaponized LNK files shows that the threat actor behind this campaign used anti-forensic techniques to wipe out personal metadata to remove information connected to its operations systems.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Russia)

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”.

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