Microsoft research claims that Russian hackers have contracted out portions of their cyberespionage operations to criminal organisations, particularly those targeting Ukraine.
In June, “a suspected cybercrime group used commodity malware to compromise at least 50 Ukrainian military devices,” Microsoft wrote in its Digital Defense Report 2024, released on Tuesday. The company claimed it also saw a hacking outfit known as Aqua Blizzard, allegedly controlled by Russia’s FSB security agency, hand over control of compromised Ukrainian systems to a cybercriminal group called Storm-0593. That same cybercriminal group was seen registering a website used in spearphishing attacks on Ukraine’s military last year, the report said, “suggesting a pattern by Storm-0593 of supporting state intelligence collection objectives.”
Russia has recently focused a lot of its attention on Ukraine, much like in the real world. “Approximately 75% of targets were in Ukraine or a NATO member state, as Moscow seeks to collect intelligence on the West’s policies on the war,” the tech giant said. Microsoft stated that a government entity was the target of one-third of all assaults with a Russian connection.
The FBI and NSA issued warnings late last week about a surge of attacks being carried out by a hacking team known as Cosy Bear, which has support from the Kremlin. They claim that in order to target high-value targets, it is utilising a variety of known weaknesses in technology produced by Qualcomm, Cisco, and Google’s Android team, among others. In a study, they stated that “organisations should prioritise rapid patch deployment and keep software up to date.”
Beyond Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, Microsoft also reported “a high level of targeting of Taiwan-based enterprises from Chinese threat actors.” Beijing’s hackers also hacked into entities inside countries around the South China Sea “to collect insights into military exercises and national policy.”
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