Cisco Talos has uncovered an ongoing cyber marketing campaign by the Gamaredon risk actor group, focusing on Ukrainian customers with malicious LNK recordsdata to ship the Remcos backdoor.

Lively since at the least November 2024, this marketing campaign employs spear-phishing techniques, leveraging themes associated to the Ukraine battle to lure victims into executing the malicious recordsdata.

The LNK recordsdata, disguised as Workplace paperwork, are distributed inside ZIP archives and carry filenames referencing troop actions and different war-related matters in Russian or Ukrainian.

The assault begins with the execution of a PowerShell downloader embedded in the LNK file.

This downloader contacts geo-fenced servers situated in Russia and Germany to retrieve a second-stage ZIP payload containing the Remcos backdoor.

The downloaded payload employs DLL sideloading methods to execute the backdoor, a way that entails loading malicious DLLs by official functions. This strategy allows attackers to bypass conventional detection mechanisms.

Refined Supply Mechanisms

Gamaredon’s phishing emails seemingly embrace both direct attachments of the ZIP recordsdata or URLs redirecting victims to obtain them.

The marketing campaign’s filenames, comparable to “Coordinates of enemy takeoffs for 8 days” or “Positions of the enemy west and southwest,” counsel a deliberate try to take advantage of delicate geopolitical themes.

Metadata evaluation signifies that solely two machines had been used to create these malicious shortcut recordsdata, in keeping with Gamaredon’s operational patterns noticed in earlier campaigns.

The PowerShell scripts embedded within the LNK recordsdata use obfuscation methods, comparable to leveraging the Get-Command cmdlet, to evade antivirus detection. As soon as executed, these scripts obtain and extract the ZIP payload into the %TEMP% folder.

The payload contains clear binaries that load malicious DLLs, which decrypt and execute the ultimate Remcos backdoor payload.

This backdoor is injected into Explorer.exe and communicates with command-and-control (C2) servers hosted on infrastructure based in Germany and Russia.

Focused Infrastructure and Indicators of Compromise

The marketing campaign’s C2 servers are hosted by Web Service Suppliers comparable to GTHost and HyperHosting.

Notably, Gamaredon restricts entry to those servers primarily based on geographic location, limiting them to Ukrainian victims.

Reverse DNS information for a few of these servers reveal distinctive artifacts which have helped researchers determine extra IP addresses related to this operation.

The Remcos backdoor itself gives attackers with sturdy capabilities for distant management, together with information exfiltration and system manipulation.

Cisco Talos has noticed proof of unpolluted functions like TivoDiag.exe being abused for DLL sideloading throughout this marketing campaign.

Gamaredon’s use of superior methods comparable to DLL sideloading, geo-fenced infrastructure, and thematic phishing underscores its persistence in focusing on Ukraine amidst ongoing geopolitical tensions.

Organizations are suggested to stay vigilant towards such threats by implementing sturdy endpoint safety, e mail safety measures, and community monitoring options.

IOCs for this risk may be present in our GitHub repository right here.    

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Mar 27, 2025Ravie LakshmananMalware / Web site Safety

An ongoing marketing campaign that infiltrates reputable web sites with malicious JavaScript injects to advertise Chinese language-language playing platforms has ballooned to compromise roughly 150,000 websites up to now.

“The risk actor has barely revamped their interface however remains to be counting on an iframe injection to show a full-screen overlay within the customer’s browser,” c/facet safety analyst Himanshu Anand stated in a brand new evaluation.

As of writing, there are over 135,800 websites containing the JavaScript payload, per statistics from PublicWWW.

As documented by the web site safety firm final month, the marketing campaign includes infecting web sites with malicious JavaScript that is designed to hijack the consumer’s browser window to redirect website guests to pages selling playing platforms.

The redirections have been discovered to happen through JavaScript hosted on 5 completely different domains (e.g., “zuizhongyj[.]com”) that, in flip, serve the principle payload accountable for performing the redirects.

c/facet stated it additionally noticed one other variant of the marketing campaign that entails injecting scripts and iframe parts in HTML impersonating reputable betting web sites equivalent to Bet365 by making use of official logos and branding.

The tip purpose is to serve a fullscreen overlay utilizing CSS that causes the malicious playing touchdown web page to be displayed when visiting one of many contaminated websites in place of the particular internet content material.

“This assault demonstrates how risk actors consistently adapt, rising their attain and utilizing new layers of obfuscation,” Anand stated. “Shopper-side assaults like these are on the rise, with an increasing number of findings each day.”

The disclosure comes as GoDaddy revealed particulars of a long-running malware operation dubbed DollyWay World Domination that has compromised over 20,000 web sites globally since 2016. As of February 2025, over 10,000 distinctive WordPress websites have fallen sufferer to the scheme.

“The present iteration […] primarily targets guests of contaminated WordPress websites through injected redirect scripts that make use of a distributed community of Site visitors Route System (TDS) nodes hosted on compromised web sites,” safety researcher Denis Sinegubko stated.

“These scripts redirect website guests to varied rip-off pages by means of site visitors dealer networks related to VexTrio, one of many largest recognized cybercriminal affiliate networks that leverages refined DNS methods, site visitors distribution programs, and area era algorithms to ship malware and scams throughout international networks.”

The assaults begin with injecting a dynamically generated script into the WordPress website, in the end redirecting guests to VexTrio or LosPollos hyperlinks. The exercise can also be stated to have used advert networks like PropellerAds to monetize site visitors from compromised websites.

The malicious injections on the server-side are facilitated by means of PHP code inserted into lively plugins, whereas additionally taking steps to disable safety plugins, delete malicious admin customers, and siphon reputable admin credentials to satisfy their targets.

GoDaddy has since revealed that the DollyWay TDS leverages a distributed community of compromised WordPress websites as TDS and command-and-control (C2) nodes, reaching 9-10 million month-to-month web page impressions. Moreover, the VexTrio redirect URLs have been discovered to be obtained from the LosPollos site visitors dealer community.

Round November 2024, DollyWay operators are stated to have deleted a number of of their C2/TDS servers, with the TDS script acquiring the redirect URLs from a Telegram channel named trafficredirect.

“The disruption of DollyWay’s relationship with LosPollos marks a big turning level on this long-running marketing campaign,” Sinegubko famous. “Whereas the operators have demonstrated exceptional adaptability by rapidly transitioning to different site visitors monetization strategies, the speedy infrastructure modifications and partial outages recommend some degree of operational affect.”