Russian corporations have been focused as a part of a large-scale phishing marketing campaign that is designed to ship a recognized malware known as DarkWatchman.
Targets of the assaults embody entities within the media, tourism, finance and insurance coverage, manufacturing, retail, power, telecom, transport, and biotechnology sectors, Russian cybersecurity firm F6 mentioned.
The exercise is assessed to be the work of a financially motivated group known as Hive0117, which has been attributed by IBM X-Drive to assaults geared toward customers in Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia spanning telecom, digital, and industrial sectors.
Then in September 2023, the DarkWatchman malware was as soon as once more used in a phishing marketing campaign focusing on power, finance, transport, and software program safety industries primarily based in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia.
Russian banks, retailers and marketplaces, telecom operators, agro-industrial enterprises, gasoline and power corporations, logistics companies, and IT companies had been singled out once more in November 2023 with DarkWatchman utilizing courier delivery-themed lures.
A JavaScript-based distant entry trojan, DarkWatchman is able to keylogging, amassing system info, and deploying secondary payloads. It was first documented in December 2021.
“The fileless nature of the DarkWatchman malware, and its use of JavaScript and a keylogger written in C#, in addition to the power to take away traces of its existence on compromised programs when instructed, are proof of considerably subtle capabilities,” IBM famous in 2023.
The newest set of assaults entails sending phishing emails containing password-protected malicious archives that, as soon as opened, ship a variant of DarkWatchman with improved capabilities to evade detection.
Ukraine Focused by New Sheriff Backdoor
The disclosure comes as IBM X-Drive mentioned an unspecified entity inside Ukraine’s protection sector was focused within the first half of 2024 with a beforehand undocumented Home windows backdoor known as Sheriff.
“The menace actor used a well-liked information portal in Ukraine, ukr.web, to host the Sheriff backdoor,” safety researcher Golo Mühr mentioned in a report revealed in late March 2025. “The modular backdoor can execute actor-directed instructions, accumulate screenshots, and covertly exfiltrate sufferer knowledge utilizing the Dropbox cloud storage API.”
“The malware focuses on exfiltrating knowledge and taking screenshots whereas sustaining a low profile designed for extended compromises.”
It is suspected that the web site could have been breached to stage the malware in early March 2024. Sheriff is supplied to obtain and handle a number of elements, together with a screenshot module, with instructions and configuration values obtained as ZIP file feedback.
“A menace actor’s entry to Ukraine’s largest information portal would place them to conduct a spread of high-impact assaults and function with enhanced obfuscation,” Mühr mentioned. “On this particular incident, the menace actor could have abused the trusted area to stage malware with out elevating suspicion.”
The backdoor additionally comes fitted with a “suicide” operate that, when invoked remotely by the operator, ceases all exercise and deletes the listing containing the malware and the folder on Dropbox used for command-and-control (C2) communications.
IBM identified that sure points of the malware overlap with that of Turla’s Kazuar and Crutch, in addition to Operation Groundbait’s Prikormka and Dangerous Magic’s CloudWizard.
“Each CloudWizard and Sheriff include a operate ‘GetSettings”https://thehackernews.com/”get_Settings’ to retrieve every module’s configuration,” the corporate mentioned. “CloudWizard, Prikormka, and Sheriff share the identical screenshot taking intervals of quarter-hour. CloudWizard and Prikormka’s file itemizing modules are known as ‘tree,’ which is the title Sheriff makes use of for exfiltration of an inventory of recordsdata.”
The invention of the backdoor follows a report from Ukraine’s State Service for Particular Communications and Data Safety (SSSCIP), warning of a 48% improve within the variety of incidents within the second half of 2024 (2,576), in comparison with the earlier six-month interval (1,739).
In complete, 4,315 cyber incidents had been registered in 2024, up from 1,350 in 2021, 2,194 in 2022, and a couple of,543 in 2023. The variety of essential and high-severity incidents, then again, dropped considerably to 59, a decline from 1,048 in 2022 and 367 in 2023.
“Russian hackers are actively implementing automation, using provide chain assaults for infiltration by means of software program distributors, and mixing espionage and sabotage strategies,” SSSCIP mentioned. “The first focus of assaults is the gathering of intelligence that would affect the operational state of affairs on the entrance. Specifically, the adversary is focusing on situational consciousness programs and specialised protection enterprises.”
