The menace actor often known as Sticky Werewolf has been linked to focused assaults primarily in Russia and Belarus with the intention of delivering the Lumma Stealer malware by way of a beforehand undocumented implant.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky is monitoring the exercise beneath the identify Offended Likho, which it stated bears a “robust resemblance” to Awaken Likho (aka Core Werewolf, GamaCopy, and PseudoGamaredon).
“Nonetheless, Offended Likho’s assaults are typically focused, with a extra compact infrastructure, a restricted vary of implants, and a deal with staff of enormous organizations, together with authorities businesses and their contractors,” the Russian firm stated.
It is suspected that the menace actors are possible native Russian audio system given using fluent Russian within the bait recordsdata used to set off the an infection chain. Final month, cybersecurity firm F6 (previously F.A.C.C.T.) described it as a “pro-Ukrainian cyberspy group.”
The attackers have been discovered to primarily single out organizations in Russia and Belarus, with tons of of victims recognized within the former.
Earlier intrusion actions related to the group have leveraged phishing emails as a conduit to distribute varied malware households corresponding to NetWire, Rhadamanthys, Ozone RAT, and a backdoor often known as DarkTrack, the final of which is launched through a loader referred to as Ande Loader.
The assault sequence includes using spear-phishing emails bearing a booby-trapped attachment (e.g., archive recordsdata), inside that are two Home windows shortcut (LNK) recordsdata and a legit lure doc.
The archive recordsdata are answerable for advancing the malicious exercise to the next-stage, unleashing a fancy multi-stage course of to deploy the Lumma data stealer.
“This implant was created utilizing the legit open-source installer, Nullsoft Scriptable Set up System, and features as a self-extracting archive (SFX),” Kaspersky stated.
The assaults have been noticed incorporating steps to evade detection by safety distributors by way of a examine for emulators and sandboxed environments, inflicting the malware to both terminate or resume after a ten,000 ms delay, a method additionally noticed in Awaken Likho implants.
This overlap has raised the likelihood that the attackers behind the 2 campaigns share the identical know-how or possible the identical group utilizing a special set of instruments for various targets and duties.
Lumma Stealer is designed to collect system and put in software program data from compromised gadgets, in addition to delicate information corresponding to cookies, usernames, passwords, banking card numbers, and connection logs. It is also able to stealing information from varied internet browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, cryptowallet browser extensions (MetaMask), authenticators, and from apps AnyDesk and KeePass.
“The group’s newest assaults use the Lumma stealer, which collects an unlimited quantity of information from contaminated gadgets, together with browser-stored banking particulars and cryptowallet recordsdata,” Kaspersky stated.
“The group depends on available malicious utilities obtained from darknet boards, relatively than growing its personal instruments. The one work they do themselves is writing mechanisms of malware supply to the sufferer’s gadget and crafting focused phishing emails.”