US Government, Microsoft Aim to Disrupt Russian threat actor ‘Star Blizzard’

3 weeks ago 5

New reports from some Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit and the U.S. Department of Justice exposure a disruptive cognition against much than 100 servers utilized by “Star Blizzard” — a Russian-based cyber menace histrion specializing successful compromising email boxes to exfiltrate delicate contented oregon interfere with the target’s activities.

Who is Star Blizzard?

Star Blizzard is besides known arsenic Seaborgium, Callisto Group, TA446, Coldriver, TAG-53 oregon BlueCharlie. According to assorted authorities entities astir the globe, Star Blizzard is subordinate to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Centre 18.

The menace histrion has been progressive since astatine slightest precocious 2015, according to a report from cybersecurity institution F-Secure. The study indicated the radical targeted subject personnel, authorities officials, and deliberation tanks and journalists successful Europe and the South Caucasus, with a superior involvement of gathering quality related to overseas and information argumentation successful those regions.

According to reports:

  • Since 2019, Star Blizzard has targeted the defence and governmental organizations successful the U.S. arsenic good arsenic different areas specified arsenic the world assemblage oregon antithetic NGOs and politicians.
  • In 2022, the radical expanded and started targeting defense-industrial targets arsenic good arsenic US Department of Energy facilities.
  • Since January 2023, Microsoft has identified 82 antithetic targets for the menace actor, astatine a complaint of astir 1 onslaught per week.

SEE: How to Create an Effective Cybersecurity Awareness Program (TechRepublic Premium)

Modus opérandi

Star Blizzard is known for mounting up infrastructure to motorboat spear phishing attacks, often targeting the idiosyncratic email accounts of selected targets. These accounts typically person weaker information protections than nonrecreational email accounts.

As stated by Microsoft’s Assistant General Counsel Steven Masada successful a property release: “Star Blizzard is persistent. They meticulously survey their targets and airs arsenic trusted contacts to execute their goals.”

Sample spear phishing email.Sample spear phishing email. Image: Microsoft

Once infrastructure is exploited, the menace histrion tin rapidly power to caller infrastructure, rendering it hard for defenders to observe and artifact the utilized domains oregon IP addresses. In particular, the radical uses aggregate registrars to registry domain names and leverage aggregate link-shortening services to redirect users to phishing pages operated utilizing the infamous Evilginx phishing kit. The radical besides uses unfastened redirectors from morganatic websites.

Redirection concatenation  utilizing respective  redirectors and link-shortening services.Redirection concatenation utilizing respective redirectors and link-shortening services. Image: Microsoft

The menace histrion has besides utilized altered versions of morganatic email templates, specified arsenic OneDrive record stock notifications. In this case, the radical utilized recently created email addresses intended to impersonate a trusted sender truthful the recipient would beryllium much apt to unfastened the phishing email. The email would incorporate a nexus to a modified PDF oregon DOCX record hosted connected a unreality retention service, yet starring to the Evilginx phishing kit. This allowed the attackers to execute a man-in-the-middle onslaught susceptible of bypassing Multi-Factor Authentication.

Massive disruption

The DOJ announced the seizure of 41 Internet domains and further proxies utilized by the Russian menace actor, portion a coordinated civilian enactment from Microsoft restrained 66 further domains utilized by the menace actor.

The domains were utilized by the menace histrion to tally spear phishing attacks to compromise targeted systems oregon email boxes, for cyberespionage purposes.

Star Blizzard is expected to rapidly rebuild an infrastructure for its fraudulent activities. However, Microsoft reports that the disruption cognition impacts the menace actor’s activities astatine a captious moment, erstwhile overseas interference successful U.S. antiauthoritarian processes are astatine their highest. It volition besides alteration Microsoft to disrupt immoderate caller infrastructure faster done an existing tribunal proceeding.

Want extortion from this threat? Educate and bid your staff.

To debar Star Blizzard, reports suggest that organizations should:

The menace actor’s phishing emails look to beryllium from known contacts that users oregon organizations expect to person email from. The sender code could beryllium from immoderate escaped email provider, but peculiar attraction should beryllium paid to emails received from Proton relationship senders, arsenic the menace histrion has often utilized that email supplier successful the past.

Should uncertainty arise, users should not click connected a link. Instead, they should study the suspicious email to their IT oregon information unit for analysis. To execute this, users should beryllium educated and trained to observe spear phishing attempts.

Disclosure: I enactment for Trend Micro, but the views expressed successful this nonfiction are mine.

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