Ukraine has claimed accountability for a cyber assault that focused Russia state media firm VGTRK and disrupted its operations, in response to experiences from Bloomberg and Reuters.
The incident happened on the night time of October 7, VGTRK confirmed, describing it as an “unprecedented hacker assault.” Nevertheless, it mentioned “no important injury” was precipitated and that every thing was working usually regardless of makes an attempt to interrupt radio and TV broadcasts.
That mentioned, Russian media outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the hackers wiped “every thing” from the corporate’s servers, together with backups, citing an nameless supply.
A supply informed Reuters that “Ukrainian hackers ‘congratulated’ Putin on his birthday by finishing up a large-scale assault on the all-Russian state tv and radio broadcasting firm.”
The assault is believed to be the work of a pro-Ukrainian hacker group referred to as Sudo rm-RF. The Russian authorities has since mentioned an investigation into the assault is ongoing and that it “aligns with the anti-Russian agenda of the West.”
The event comes amid continued cyber assaults focusing on each Russia and Ukraine in opposition to the backdrop of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that commenced in February 2022.
Ukraine’s State Service of Particular Communications and Info Safety (SSSCIP), in a report revealed late final month, mentioned it has noticed a rise within the variety of cyber assaults focusing on safety, protection, and power sectors, with 1,739 incidents registered within the first half of 2024 reaching, up 19% from 1,463 within the earlier half.
Forty-eight of these assaults have been deemed both crucial or excessive in severity stage. Over 1,600 incidents have been categorised as medium and 21 have been tagged as low in severity. The variety of crucial severity incidents witnessed a drop from 31 in H2 2023 to three in H1 2024.
Over the previous two years, adversaries have pivoted from staging harmful assaults to securing covert footholds to extract delicate data, the company mentioned.
“In 2024, we observe a pivot of their focus in direction of something immediately related to the theater of conflict and assaults on service supplier — aimed toward sustaining a low profile, sustaining a presence in methods associated to conflict and politics,” Yevheniya Nakonechna, head of State Cyber Safety Centre of the SSSCIP, mentioned.
“Hackers are not simply exploiting vulnerabilities wherever they will however at the moment are focusing on areas crucial to the success and assist of their army operations.”
The assaults have been primarily attributed to eight completely different exercise clusters, one in every of which features a China-linked cyber espionage actor tracked as UAC-0027 that was noticed deploying a malware pressure referred to as DirtyMoe to conduct cryptojacking and DDoS assaults.
SSSCIP has additionally highlighted intrusion campaigns staged by a Russian state-sponsored hacking group dubbed UAC-0184, stating its observe report of initiating communications with potential targets utilizing messaging apps like Sign with the aim of distributing malware.
One other risk actor that has remained laser-focused on Ukraine is Gamaredon, a Russian hacking crew that is often known as Aqua Blizzard (beforehand Actinium), Armageddon, Hive0051, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, Trident Ursa, UAC-0010, UNC530, and Winterflounder.
“The depth of the bodily battle has noticeably elevated since 2022, but it surely’s price noting that the extent of exercise from Gamaredon has remained constant – the group has been methodically deploying its malicious instruments in opposition to its targets since properly earlier than the invasion started,” Slovak cybersecurity agency ESET mentioned in an evaluation.
Notable among the many malware households is an data stealer referred to as PteroBleed, which additionally depends on an arsenal of downloaders, droppers, weaponizers, backdoors, and different advert hoc applications to facilitate payload supply, information exfiltration, distant entry, and propagation by way of related USB drives.
“Gamaredon has additionally demonstrated resourcefulness by using numerous methods to evade network-based detections, leveraging third-party companies equivalent to Telegram, Cloudflare, and ngrok,” safety researcher Zoltán Rusnák mentioned. “Regardless of the relative simplicity of its instruments, Gamaredon’s aggressive method and persistence make it a major risk.”
