The menace actor behind the GIFTEDCROOK malware has made important updates to show the computer virus from a fundamental browser knowledge stealer to a potent intelligence-gathering device.
“Latest campaigns in June 2025 show GIFTEDCROOK’s enhanced means to exfiltrate a broad vary of delicate paperwork from the gadgets of focused people, together with doubtlessly proprietary information and browser secrets and techniques,” Arctic Wolf Labs stated in a report revealed this week.
“This shift in performance, mixed with the content material of its phishing lures, […] suggests a strategic concentrate on intelligence gathering from Ukrainian governmental and army entities.”
GIFTEDCROOK was first documented by the Pc Emergency Response Workforce of Ukraine (CERT-UA) in early April 2025 in reference to a marketing campaign focusing on army entities, regulation enforcement businesses, and native self-government our bodies.
The exercise, attributed to a hacking group it tracks as UAC-0226, includes using phishing emails containing macro-laced Microsoft Excel paperwork that act as a conduit to deploy GIFTEDCROOK.
An info stealer at its core, the malware is designed to steal cookies, looking historical past, and authentication knowledge from standard internet browsers corresponding to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.
Arctic Wolf’s evaluation of the artifacts has revealed that the stealer began off as a demo in February 2025, earlier than gaining new options with variations 1.2 and 1.3.
These new iterations embody the flexibility to reap paperwork and information beneath 7 MB in measurement, particularly searching for information created or modified inside the final 45 days. The malware particularly searches for the next extensions: .doc, .docx, .rtf, .pptx, .ppt, .csv, .xls, .xlsx, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .pdf, .odt, .ods, .rar, .zip, .eml, .txt, .sqlite, and .ovpn.
The e-mail campaigns leverage military-themed PDF lures to entice customers into clicking on a Mega cloud storage hyperlink that hosts a macro-enabled Excel workbook (“Список оповіщених військовозобов’язаних організації 609528.xlsm”), inflicting GIFTEDCROOK to be downloaded when the recipient activates macros. Many customers do not understand how widespread macro-enabled Excel information are in phishing assaults. They slip previous defenses as a result of folks typically anticipate spreadsheets in work emails—particularly ones that look official or government-related.
The captured info is bundled right into a ZIP archive and exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled Telegram channel. If the overall archive measurement exceeds 20 MB, it’s damaged down into a number of elements. By sending stolen ZIP archives in small chunks, GIFTEDCROOK avoids detection and skips round conventional community filters. Within the remaining stage, a batch script is executed to erase traces of the stealer from the compromised host.
This is not nearly stealing passwords or monitoring on-line habits—it is focused cyber espionage. The malware’s new means to sift by latest information and seize paperwork like PDFs, spreadsheets, and even VPN configs factors to an even bigger aim: accumulating intelligence. For anybody working in public sector roles or dealing with delicate inner studies, this type of doc stealer poses an actual threat—not simply to the person, however to the complete community they’re linked to.
“The timing of the campaigns mentioned on this report demonstrates clear alignment with geopolitical occasions, significantly the latest negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul,” Arctic Wolf stated.
“The development from easy credential theft in GIFTEDCROOK model 1, to complete doc and knowledge exfiltration in variations 1.2 and 1.3, displays coordinated growth efforts the place malware capabilities adopted geopolitical targets to reinforce knowledge assortment from compromised methods in Ukraine.”
