The WINELOADER backdoor applied in current cyber attacks targeting diplomatic entities with wine-tasting phishing lures has been attributed as the handiwork of a hacking team with one-way links to Russia’s International Intelligence Assistance (SVR), which was dependable for breaching SolarWinds and Microsoft.
The results arrive from Mandiant, which claimed Midnight Blizzard (aka APT29, BlueBravo, or Cozy Bear) employed the malware to focus on German political parties with phishing e-mail bearing a symbol from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) close to February 26, 2024.
“This is the 1st time we have seen this APT29 cluster focus on political events, indicating a probable region of emerging operational concentrate outside of the regular concentrating on of diplomatic missions,” researchers Luke Jenkins and Dan Black said.
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WINELOADER was 1st disclosed by Zscaler ThreatLabz previous thirty day period as portion of a cyber espionage campaign which is believed to have been ongoing given that at least July 2023. It attributed the exercise to a cluster dubbed SPIKEDWINE.
Attack chains leverage phishing emails with German-language lure written content that purports to be an invite for a evening meal reception to trick recipients into clicking on a phony website link and downloading a rogue HTML Application (HTA) file, a 1st-stage dropper named ROOTSAW (aka EnvyScout) that acts as a conduit to provide WINELOADER from a remote server.
“The German-language lure doc consists of a phishing link directing victims to a malicious ZIP file that contains a ROOTSAW dropper hosted on an actor-managed compromised site,” the scientists mentioned. “ROOTSAW delivered a 2nd-stage CDU-themed entice document and a next stage WINELOADER payload.”
WINELOADER, invoked via a strategy termed DLL side-loading working with the reputable sqldumper.exe, comes equipped with capabilities to contact an actor-managed server and fetch more modules for execution on the compromised hosts.
It can be reported to share similarities with regarded APT29 malware people like BURNTBATTER, MUSKYBEAT, and BEATDROP, suggesting the perform of a frequent developer.
WINELOADER, per the Google Cloud subsidiary, has also been used in an procedure focusing on diplomatic entities in the Czech Republic, Germany, India, Italy, Latvia, and Peru in late January 2024.
“ROOTSAW carries on to be the central element of APT29’s first access efforts to gather foreign political intelligence,” the business mentioned.
“The initially-stage malware’s expanded use to goal German political functions is a noted departure from the usual diplomatic aim of this APT29 subcluster, and practically definitely reflects the SVR’s fascination in gleaning data from political get-togethers and other features of civil society that could progress Moscow’s geopolitical pursuits.”
The growth will come as German prosecutors have billed a armed service officer, named Thomas H, with espionage offenses right after he was allegedly caught spying on behalf of Russian intelligence services and passing on unspecified sensitive facts. He was arrested in August 2023.
“From May well 2023, he approached the Russian Consulate Basic in Bonn and the Russian Embassy in Berlin several situations on his possess initiative and made available to cooperate,” the Office environment of the Federal Prosecutor stated. “On 1 situation, he transmitted data that he experienced acquired in the system of his experienced functions for forwarding to a Russian intelligence provider.”
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Some pieces of this write-up are sourced from:
thehackernews.com
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