Security News > 2021 > June > US seizes domains used by APT29 in recent USAID phishing attacks

The US Department of Justice has seized two Internet domains used in recent phishing attacks impersonating the U.S. Agency for International Development to distribute malware and gain access to internal networks.

Com and were used to receive data exfiltrated from victims of the targeted phishing attacks and send further commands malware to execute on infected machines.

To conduct the phishing attacks, NOBELIUM compromised a Contact Contact account for USAID using for email campaigns.

Using this account, the threat actors impersonated USAID in phishing emails sent to approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations, including government agencies and human rights organizations.

"The actors' instance of the Cobalt Strike tool received C2 communications via other subdomains of theyardservice[.]com, as well as the domain worldhomeoutlet[.]com. It was those two domains that the Department seized pursuant to the court's seizure order."

In indicators of compromise for this campaign shared by Microsoft, there are a total of thirty-four domains used in some capacity during the attacks, which includes the two domains seized by the FBI. This operation was conducted by the FBI Washington Field Office and may allow law enforcement to gain a better understanding of who was breached during this attack and notify victims.

News URL

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/us-seizes-domains-used-by-apt29-in-recent-usaid-phishing-attacks/