Security News
Russia's cyber attacks against Ukraine surged by 250% in 2022 when compared to two years ago, Google's Threat Analysis Group and Mandiant disclosed in a new joint report. Mandiant said it observed, "More destructive cyber attacks in Ukraine during the first four months of 2022 than in the previous eight years with attacks peaking around the start of the invasion."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to have a major impact on energy prices, inflation, and cyberthreats, with the ransomware scene experiencing some of the biggest shifts, according to ESET. "The ongoing war in Ukraine has created a divide among ransomware operators, with some supporting and others opposing the aggression. Attackers have also been using increasingly destructive tactics, such as deploying wipers that mimic ransomware and encrypt the victim's data with no intention of providing a decryption key," explains Roman Kováč, Chief Research Officer at ESET. The digital threats trends. The war also affected brute-force attacks against exposed RDP services, but despite the decline of these attacks in 2022, password guessing remains the most favored network attack vector.
A Russia-linked threat actor has been observed deploying a new information-stealing malware in cyber attacks targeting Ukraine. Dubbed Graphiron by Broadcom-owned Symantec, the malware is the handiwork of an espionage group known as Nodaria, which is tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine as UAC-0056.
The Russian hacking group known as 'Nodaria' is using a new information-stealing malware called 'Graphiron' to steal data from Ukrainian organizations. Symantec's threat research team discovered that Nodaria has been using Graphiron in attacks since at least October 2022 through mid-January 2023.
The Russia-affiliated Sandworm used yet another wiper malware strain dubbed NikoWiper as part of an attack that took place in October 2022 targeting an energy sector company in Ukraine. The use of SDelete is notable, as it suggests that Sandworm has been experimenting with the utility as a wiper in at least two different instances to cause irrevocable damage to the targeted organizations in Ukraine.
In brief Russian hackers have proved yet again how quickly cyber attacks can be used to respond to global events with a series of DDoS attacks on German infrastructure and government websites in response to the country's plan to send tanks to Ukraine. Germany announced the transfer of 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday, jointly with the US saying it would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to the besieged nation.
Ukraine has come under a fresh cyber onslaught from Russia that involved the deployment of a previously undocumented Golang-based data wiper dubbed SwiftSlicer. ESET attributed the attack to Sandworm, a nation-state group linked to Military Unit 74455 of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
The Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team found a cocktail of five different data-wiping malware strains deployed on the network of the country's national news agency on January 17th. "As of January 27, 2023, 5 samples of malicious programs were detected, the functionality of which is aimed at violating the integrity and availability of information," CERT-UA said. Their attempt to wipe out all the data on the news agency's systems failed.
The Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage group known as Gamaredon has continued its digital onslaught against Ukraine, with recent attacks leveraging the popular messaging app Telegram to strike military and law enforcement sectors in the country. "The Gamaredon group's network infrastructure relies on multi-stage Telegram accounts for victim profiling and confirmation of geographic location, and then finally leads the victim to the next stage server for the final payload," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine has linked a destructive malware attack targeting the country's National News Agency of Ukraine to Sandworm Russian military hackers. "According to preliminary data, provided by CERT-UA specialists, the attack have caused certain destructive effects on the agency's information infrastructure, but the threat has been swiftly localized nonetheless," the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine said.