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Security The Military

Kremlin-Backed Hackers Targeted a 'Large' Petroleum Refinery In a NATO Nation (arstechnica.com) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the military-assistance dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the Kremlin's most active hacking groups targeting Ukraine recently tried to hack a large petroleum refining company located in a NATO country. The attack is a sign that the group is expanding its intelligence gathering as Russia's invasion of its neighboring country continues. The attempted hacking occurred on August 30 and was unsuccessful, researchers with Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 said on Tuesday. The hacking group -- tracked under various names including Trident Ursa, Gamaredon, UAC-0010, Primitive Bear, and Shuckworm -- has been attributed by Ukraine's Security Service to Russia's Federal Security Service.

In the past 10 months, Unit 42 has mapped more than 500 new domains and 200 samples and other bread crumbs Trident Ursa has left behind in spear phishing campaigns attempting to infect targets with information-stealing malware. The group mostly uses emails with Ukrainian-language lures. More recently, however, some samples show that the group has also begun using English-language lures. "We assess that these samples indicate that Trident Ursa is attempting to boost their intelligence collection and network access against Ukrainian and NATO allies," company researchers wrote. Among the filenames used in the unsuccessful attack were: MilitaryassistanceofUkraine.htm, Necessary_military_assistance.rar, and List of necessary things for the provision of military humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.lnk. Tuesday's report didn't name the targeted petroleum company or the country where the facility was located. In recent months, Western-aligned officials have issued warnings that the Kremlin has set its sights on energy companies in countries opposing Russia's war on Ukraine.

Trident Ursa's hacking techniques are simple but effective. The group uses multiple ways to conceal the IP addresses and other signatures of its infrastructure, phishing documents with low detection rates among anti-phishing services, and malicious HTML and Word documents. Unit 42 researchers wrote: "Trident Ursa remains an agile and adaptive APT that does not use overly sophisticated or complex techniques in its operations. In most cases, they rely on publicly available tools and scripts -- along with a significant amount of obfuscation -- as well as routine phishing attempts to successfully execute their operations..." Tuesday's report provides a list of cryptographic hashes and other indicators organizations can use to determine if Trident Ursa has targeted them. It also provides suggestions for ways to protect organizations against the group.
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Kremlin-Backed Hackers Targeted a 'Large' Petroleum Refinery In a NATO Nation More

Kremlin-Backed Hackers Targeted a 'Large' Petroleum Refinery In a NATO Nation

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  • Cyber BS ..

  • If you want security and privacy, don't connect to the internet.

    It's a really old unwritten rule.

    But hey, let's just go for it, it'll be ok, and connect all the nuclear warheads in the world to the internet.

    Matthew Broderick is still alive so we are good to go.

    • The only way to win is not to play has never been more true.

      We get involved in someone else's mess we have no business in and then go all shocked face when there's consequences to that and they hit back. Jfc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That's addressing the correct problem, but it's not an answer that gets people excited (except for some managers, and a few accountants).

  • We all know Russian (and Chinese) state-actors are constantly trying to hack Western infrastructure, sometime successfully. We hear about these things pretty regularly. What I want to know is what we are doing in response. I would like to think that we are also supporting domestic hackers and ransomware gangs attacking their countries infrastructure, but we don't hear much about that. There could be a few reasons;

    1) We are afraid to do so (seems unlikely)
    2) We are too nice and don't behave like them

  • now, if we could believe a damn thing we're told...

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