Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Kaspersky researchers and the international community at large have identified a significant number of cyberattacks executed in a political and geopolitical context. We previously published an overview of cyber activities and the threat landscape related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and continue to monitor new threats in these regions.
In October 2022, we identified an active infection of government, agriculture and transportation organizations located in the Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea regions. Although the initial vector of compromise is unclear, the details of the next stage imply the use of spear phishing or similar methods. The victims navigated to a URL pointing to a ZIP archive hosted on a malicious web server. The archive, in turn, contained two files:
A decoy document (we discovered PDF, XLSX and DOCX versions)
A malicious LNK file with a double extension (e.g., .pdf.lnk) that leads to infection when opened
Malicious ZIP archive
Decoy Word document (subject: Results of the State Duma elections in the Republic of Crimea)
In several cases, the contents of the decoy document were directly related to the name of the malicious LNK to trick the user into activating it. For example, one archive contained an LNK file named “Приказ Минфина ДНР № 176.pdf.lnk” (Ministry of Finance Decree No. 176), and the decoy document explici ..
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