The menace actor often called Sticky Werewolf has been linked to focused assaults primarily in Russia and Belarus with the intention of delivering the Lumma Stealer malware by way of a beforehand undocumented implant.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky is monitoring the exercise underneath the identify Offended Likho, which it mentioned bears a “robust resemblance” to Awaken Likho (aka Core Werewolf, GamaCopy, and PseudoGamaredon).
“Nonetheless, Offended Likho’s assaults are usually focused, with a extra compact infrastructure, a restricted vary of implants, and a deal with staff of huge organizations, together with authorities companies and their contractors,” the Russian firm mentioned.
It is suspected that the menace actors are probably native Russian audio system given the usage of fluent Russian within the bait information used to set off the an infection chain. Final month, cybersecurity firm F6 (previously F.A.C.C.T.) described it as a “pro-Ukrainian cyberspy group.”
The attackers have been discovered to primarily single out organizations in Russia and Belarus, with a whole lot of victims recognized within the former.
Earlier intrusion actions related to the group have leveraged phishing emails as a conduit to distribute numerous malware households equivalent to NetWire, Rhadamanthys, Ozone RAT, and a backdoor often called DarkTrack, the final of which is launched through a loader known as Ande Loader.
The assault sequence includes the usage of spear-phishing emails bearing a booby-trapped attachment (e.g., archive information), inside that are two Home windows shortcut (LNK) information and a respectable lure doc.
The archive information are chargeable for advancing the malicious exercise to the next-stage, unleashing a posh multi-stage course of to deploy the Lumma info stealer.
“This implant was created utilizing the respectable open-source installer, Nullsoft Scriptable Set up System, and capabilities as a self-extracting archive (SFX),” Kaspersky mentioned.
The assaults have been noticed incorporating steps to evade detection by safety distributors by way of a verify for emulators and sandboxed environments, inflicting the malware to both terminate or resume after a ten,000 ms delay, a way additionally noticed in Awaken Likho implants.
This overlap has raised the chance that the attackers behind the 2 campaigns share the identical know-how or probably the identical group utilizing a distinct set of instruments for various targets and duties.
Lumma Stealer is designed to collect system and put in software program info from compromised gadgets, in addition to delicate knowledge equivalent to cookies, usernames, passwords, banking card numbers, and connection logs. It is also able to stealing knowledge from numerous internet browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, cryptowallet browser extensions (MetaMask), authenticators, and from apps AnyDesk and KeePass.
“The group’s newest assaults use the Lumma stealer, which collects an unlimited quantity of information from contaminated gadgets, together with browser-stored banking particulars and cryptowallet information,” Kaspersky mentioned.
“The group depends on available malicious utilities obtained from darknet boards, reasonably than growing its personal instruments. The one work they do themselves is writing mechanisms of malware supply to the sufferer’s system and crafting focused phishing emails.”