Russia-Linked Attacks on Political Organizations Continue
19.1.2018 securityweek APT

The cyber-espionage group known as Fancy Bear was highly active in the second half of 2017, hitting political organizations worldwide, Trend Micro said this week.

Also known as APT28, Pawn Storm, Sofacy, Group 74, Sednit, Tsar Team, and Strontium, the group is said to have ties with the Russian government. Since 2015, the group has been associated with attacks on political organizations in France, Germany, Montenegro, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States.

During the second half of 2017, such attacks continued, without revealing much technical innovation over time. However, the attacks are well prepared, persistent, and often hard to defend against, the security researchers say.

“Pawn Storm has a large toolset full of social engineering tricks, malware and exploits, and therefore doesn’t need much innovation apart from occasionally using their own zero-days and quickly abusing software vulnerabilities shortly after a security patch is released,” Trend Micro points out.

During the second half of 2017, the group was observed targeting organizations with credential phishing and spear phishing attacks. In August and September, the hackers used tabnabbing against Yahoo! users, a method that involves changing a browser tab to point to a phishing site after distracting the target.

In attacks observed in October and November 2017, the group used credential phishing emails to target specific organizations. One incident employed an email claiming to inform the target of an expired password, while the other claimed a new file was present on the company’s OneDrive system.

During the past six months, Pawn Storm also targeted several International Olympic Wintersport Federations, including the European Ice Hockey Federation, the International Ski Federation, the International Biathlon Union, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, and the International Luge Federation.

The attacks appear to be related to several Russian Olympic players being banned for life in fall 2017. A recent incident involving the leak of emails exchanged between officials of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other individuals involved with the Olympics also appears to be related to the state-sponsored actor.

Some of the group’s political targets included chmail.ir webmail users, who received credential phishing emails on May 18, 2017, one day before the presidential elections in Iran. Similar incidents were observed targeting political organizations globally, Trend Micro says.

In June 2017, the actor set up phishing sites mimicking the ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) of the U.S. Senate. In attacks observed during fall 2017, the group was abusing Google’s Blogspot service to target Bellingcat, a group of investigative journalists that uses open source information to report on various events taking place around the world.

Individuals interested in the CyCon U.S. conference organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in collaboration with the Army Cyber Institute at West Point were also targeted by Pawn Storm last year.

Moving forth, the group is expected to continue targeting political organizations, while also likely focusing on influencing public opinion via social media, given that social media algorithms are “susceptible to abuse by various actors with bad intentions.”

“Publishing stolen data together with spreading fake news and rumors on social media gives malicious actors powerful tools. While a successful influence campaign might seem relatively easy to do, it needs a lot of planning, persistence, and resources to be successful. Some of the basic tools and services, like ones used to spread fake news on social media, are already being offered as a service in the underground economy,” Trend Micro notes.

Other actors too might start campaigns attempting to influence politics and issues of interest domestically and abroad, the researchers say. Pawn Storm, however, is expected to continue to be highly active, especially with the Olympics and several significant global elections taking place in 2018.