New threat actor GamaCopy mimics Russia-linked Gamaredon APT in attacks on Russian-speaking targets.
The Knownsec 404 Advanced Threat Intelligence team recently analyzed attacks on Russian-speaking targets using military-themed bait, 7z SFX for payloads, and UltraVNC, mimicking Gamaredon’s TTPs.
The researchers linked the activity to the APT Core Werewolf (aka Awaken Likho, PseudoGamaredon), it mimics Gamaredon and for this reason, researchers called it GamaCopy.
GamaCopy has been active since at least August 2021, it was discovered in June 2023 and targets Russia’s defense and infrastructure sectors, mimicking Gamaredon’s TTPs.
“By tracing the source of the sample, we have associated it with Core Werewolf, a group that has launched multiple attacks against Russia. As is well known, there is another interesting pair of APT attacks that love-hate relationship in the South Asian region, namely sidewinder and sidecopy.” reads the report published by the Knownsec 404 Advanced Threat Intelligence team. “The discovered attack activity this time mimics the Gamaredon organization that attacks Ukraine, so it can be named GamaCopy.”
The researchers noticed that other security vendors attributed multiple historical samples of the same type to the Gamaredon organization. The organization’s successful false flag operation has deceived some vendors who have not conducted an in-depth analysis.
The attack chain commences with a 7-Zip self-extracting (SFX) archive dropping payloads, including a batch script that installs UltraVNC and displays a decoy PDF.
The attackers renamed the UltraVNC executable in “OneDrivers.exe” to evade detection by attempting to mimic a Microsoft OneDrive binary.
The bait documents employed in the GamaCopy’s attacks focus on military facilities, reflecting Russia-Ukraine conflict themes. However, while Gamaredon uses Ukrainian-language bait, GamaCopy targets Russian-speaking users.
“from the perspectives of code similarity, language usage in bait documents, and port assets, it is more inclined to attribute the attack samples discovered in this case to the GamaCopy organization.” concludes the report. “Since its exposure, this organization has frequently mimicked the TTPs used by the Gararedon organization and cleverly used open-source tools as a shield to achieve its own goals while confusing the public.”
The Knownsec 404 team also published Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) for this campaign.
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