ESET Analysis
ESET Analysis has carried out a complete technical evaluation of Gamaredon’s toolset used to conduct its cyberespionage actions centered in Ukraine
26 Sep 2024
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5 min. learn
The struggle in Ukraine, which began in February 2014 and intensified with Russia’s invasion of the nation on February 24th, 2022, exemplifies a multifaceted struggle, rife with disinformation campaigns and cyberwarfare. All through these years, ESET Analysis has revealed a number of high-profile cyberattacks carried out by Russia-aligned superior persistent menace (APT) teams focusing on Ukrainian entities and Ukrainian audio system, analyzed varied operations, and stored observe of a number of APT teams specializing in this area due to the struggle.
On this analysis, we determined to look at the operations of Gamaredon, the Russia-aligned group that has been energetic since at the least 2013 and is at present probably the most engaged APT group in Ukraine. The depth of the bodily battle has noticeably elevated since 2022, but it surely’s value noting that the extent of exercise from Gamaredon has remained constant – the group has been methodically deploying its malicious instruments towards its targets since effectively earlier than the invasion started.
We’ve analyzed hundreds of samples whereas conducting a complete technical evaluation of Gamaredon’s toolset used to conduct its cyberespionage actions in 2022 and 2023; we reveal the outcomes of our evaluation in our white paper, which you’ll learn in full right here:
Within the white paper, we share particulars about Gamaredon’s ever-changing obfuscation tips and quite a few strategies used for bypassing domain-based blocking. These techniques pose a major problem to monitoring efforts, as they make it more durable for methods to robotically detect and block the group’s instruments. However, throughout our analysis, we managed to establish and perceive these techniques, and preserve observe of Gamaredon’s actions. We additionally describe the instruments which are most prevalent or fascinating in another means as a way to shed extra mild on the relationships that exist among the many instruments and to assist create an even bigger image of the instruments’ ecosystem.
Victimology and group background
Gamaredon has been attributed by the Safety Service of Ukraine (SSU) to the 18th Heart of Data Safety of the FSB, working out of occupied Crimea. We consider this group to be collaborating with one other menace actor that we found and named InvisiMole.
As evidenced over time by ESET telemetry, in a number of stories from CERT-UA, and from different official Ukrainian our bodies, the vast majority of Gamaredon’s assaults are directed towards Ukrainian governmental establishments. To our shock, in April 2022 and February 2023, we noticed just a few makes an attempt to compromise targets in a number of NATO nations, particularly Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, however no profitable breaches have been noticed.
Between November 1st, 2022 and December 31st 2023, we noticed greater than a thousand distinctive machines in Ukraine that have been attacked by Gamaredon. The seven-day transferring common of every day additions is visualized in Determine 1.
Noisy and reckless, however nonetheless harmful
To compromise new victims, Gamaredon conducts spearphishing campaigns after which makes use of its customized malware to weaponize Phrase paperwork and USB drives accessible to the preliminary sufferer and which are anticipated to be shared with additional potential victims.
Based on our long-term observations, Gamaredon, not like most APT teams, doesn’t attempt to be stealthy and stay hidden so long as doable through the use of novel strategies when conducting cyberespionage operations, however relatively the operators are reckless and don’t thoughts being found by defenders throughout their operations. Despite the fact that they don’t care a lot about being noisy, they apparently put in a variety of effort to keep away from being blocked by safety merchandise and check out very laborious to keep up entry to compromised methods.
Usually, Gamaredon makes an attempt to protect its entry by deploying a number of easy downloaders or backdoors concurrently. The dearth of sophistication of Gamaredon instruments is compensated by frequent updates and use of commonly altering obfuscation.
A shift in the direction of VBScript and PowerShell
Gamaredon’s toolset has undergone a number of modifications over time. In 2022, the group slowly began to shift towards the usage of VBScript and PowerShell in tandem, and Gamaredon nearly fully ditched the usage of SFX archives, which had been its major tactic beforehand. Throughout 2023, Gamaredon notably improved its cyberespionage capabilities and developed a number of new instruments in PowerShell, with the give attention to stealing invaluable knowledge, for instance from net purposes working inside web browsers, e mail purchasers, and immediate messaging purposes akin to Sign and Telegram.
Nevertheless, PteroBleed, an infostealer we found in August 2023, additionally focuses on stealing knowledge associated to a Ukrainian navy system and from a webmail service utilized by a Ukrainian governmental establishment. The timeline of recent instruments launched in 2022 and 2023 is proven in Determine 2; apart from PteroScreen, all of them have been found by ESET Analysis.
Typically, we will categorize Gamaredon’s toolset into downloaders, droppers, weaponizers, stealers, backdoors, and advert hoc instruments. The group makes use of a mixture of general-purpose and devoted downloaders to ship payloads. Droppers are used to ship varied VBScript payloads; weaponizers alter properties of current information or create new information on linked USB drives, and stealers exfiltrate particular information from the file system. Moreover, backdoors function distant shells, and advert hoc instruments carry out particular capabilities, like a reverse SOCKS proxy or payload supply utilizing the official command line program rclone.
Quick switching of C&C IP addresses and domains
Our evaluation additionally sheds mild on the group’s community infrastructure. Gamaredon makes use of a method referred to as quick flux DNS – steadily altering its command and management (C&C) servers’ IP addresses, normally a number of occasions per day, to keep away from IP-based blocking. The group additionally steadily registers and updates many new C&C domains to keep away from domain-based blocking, primarily utilizing .ru because the top-level area (TLD).
Gamaredon has additionally demonstrated resourcefulness by using varied strategies to evade network-based detections, leveraging third-party companies akin to Telegram, Cloudflare, and ngrok.
Regardless of the relative simplicity of its instruments, Gamaredon’s aggressive method and persistence make it a major menace. Given the continuing struggle within the area, we anticipate Gamaredon to proceed in its give attention to Ukraine.
For a extra detailed evaluation and technical breakdown of Gamaredon’s instruments and actions, you possibly can entry the complete ESET Analysis white paper right here.
A complete checklist of indicators of compromise (IoCs) will be present in our GitHub repository and the Gamaredon white paper.
