ESET Analysis

ESET Analysis has performed a complete technical evaluation of Gamaredon’s toolset used to conduct its cyberespionage actions targeted in Ukraine

26 Sep 2024
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5 min. learn

The warfare in Ukraine, which began in February 2014 and intensified with Russia’s invasion of the nation on February 24^th, 2022, exemplifies a multifaceted warfare, rife with disinformation campaigns and cyberwarfare. All through these years, ESET Analysis has revealed a number of high-profile cyberattacks performed by Russia-aligned superior persistent risk (APT) teams focusing on Ukrainian entities and Ukrainian audio system, analyzed varied operations, and stored monitor of a number of APT teams specializing in this area due to the warfare.

On this analysis, we determined to look at the operations of Gamaredon, the Russia-aligned group that has been lively since a minimum of 2013 and is at present essentially the most engaged APT group in Ukraine. The depth of the bodily battle has noticeably elevated since 2022, however it’s price noting that the extent of exercise from Gamaredon has remained constant – the group has been methodically deploying its malicious instruments towards its targets since properly earlier than the invasion started.

Now we have analyzed 1000’s 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 be able to learn in full right here:

Within the white paper, we share particulars about Gamaredon’s ever-changing obfuscation methods and quite a few methods used for bypassing domain-based blocking. These ways pose a big problem to monitoring efforts, as they make it more durable for programs to mechanically detect and block the group’s instruments. However, throughout our analysis, we managed to determine and perceive these ways, and maintain monitor of Gamaredon’s actions. We additionally describe the instruments which can be most prevalent or fascinating in another manner in an effort 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 18^th Heart of Data Safety of the FSB, working out of occupied Crimea. We imagine this group to be collaborating with one other risk actor that we found and named InvisiMole.

As evidenced over time by ESET telemetry, in a number of reviews 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 a number of 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 1^st, 2022 and December 31^st 2023, we noticed greater than a thousand distinctive machines in Ukraine that have been attacked by Gamaredon. The seven-day shifting common of each 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 can be anticipated to be shared with additional potential victims.

In accordance with our long-term observations, Gamaredon, in contrast to most APT teams, doesn’t attempt to be stealthy and stay hidden so long as doable through the use of novel methods when conducting cyberespionage operations, however quite the operators are reckless and don’t thoughts being found by defenders throughout their operations. Though they don’t care a lot about being noisy, they apparently put in a number of effort to keep away from being blocked by safety merchandise and take a look at very exhausting to keep up entry to compromised programs.

Usually, Gamaredon makes an attempt to protect its entry by deploying a number of easy downloaders or backdoors concurrently. The shortage of sophistication of Gamaredon instruments is compensated by frequent updates and use of frequently altering obfuscation.

A shift in direction of VBScript and PowerShell

Gamaredon’s toolset has undergone a number of adjustments 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 precious information, for instance from net functions working inside web browsers, electronic mail shoppers, and prompt messaging functions corresponding to Sign and Telegram.

Nevertheless, PteroBleed, an infostealer we found in August 2023, additionally focuses on stealing information 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.

On the whole, we are able to categorize Gamaredon’s toolset into downloaders, droppers, weaponizers, stealers, backdoors, and advert hoc instruments. The group makes use of a mix of general-purpose and devoted downloaders to ship payloads. Droppers are used to ship varied VBScript payloads; weaponizers alter properties of present information or create new information on related USB drives, and stealers exfiltrate particular information from the file system. Moreover, backdoors function distant shells, and advert hoc instruments carry out particular features, like a reverse SOCKS proxy or payload supply utilizing the reliable 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 generally known as quick flux DNS – often altering its command and management (C&C) servers’ IP addresses, often a number of occasions per day, to keep away from IP-based blocking. The group additionally often 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 methods to evade network-based detections, leveraging third-party providers corresponding to Telegram, Cloudflare, and ngrok.

Regardless of the relative simplicity of its instruments, Gamaredon’s aggressive method and persistence make it a big risk. Given the continued warfare within the area, we count on Gamaredon to proceed in its give attention to Ukraine.

For a extra detailed evaluation and technical breakdown of Gamaredon’s instruments and actions, you may entry the total ESET Analysis white paper right here.

A complete checklist of indicators of compromise (IoCs) may be present in our GitHub repository and the Gamaredon white paper.