Russia-linked BlackEnergy backed new cyber attacks on Ukraine’s state bodies

“The Security Service of Ukraine has received more evidence of the aggressive actions of Russian intelligence services against Ukraine in cyberspace using a controlled hacker group responsible for carrying out cyberattacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure facilities during 2015-2017, known as BlackEnergy and NotPetya,” reads the SBU’s press release.

BlackEnergy made the headlines as the responsible for the massive power outage that occurred in Ukraine in December 2015.

The BlackEnergy malware is a threat improved to target SCADA systems, some variants include the KillDisk component developed to wipe the disks and make systems inoperable.

According to the SBU, BlackEnergy hackers used new samples of malware in a recent series of attack. The new malicious code act as surveillance software, they implement surveillance capabilities and remote administration features.

SBU along with experts from a well-known antivirus company determined that the malware involved in the attack are updated versions of the Industroyer backdoor.

The specialists involved in the investigation helped the Ukraine SBU to attribute the attack and implement mitigations to protect the IT infrastructure of government agencies.

The malware used in the recent attacks borrows the code from the Industroyer as reported by the ukrinform.net. website

“They have a number of similar characteristics, in particular using similar code snippets, computing capabilities of infected systems, etc.” states the ukrinform.net.

Experts from the SBU also observed attackers using hacking tools that were used by the BlackEnergy hackers in previous attacks.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Security Service of Ukraine, Russia-linked APT group)

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