February 19, 2024 at 12:45AM
Belarus and Russia-linked threat actors, identified as Winter Vivern, conducted a cyber espionage campaign exploiting vulnerabilities in Roundcube webmail servers, targeting over 80 organizations in Georgia, Poland, and Ukraine. The campaign aimed to gather intelligence on European political and military activities, demonstrating high sophistication in attack methods. TAG-70 also targeted Iranian embassies and Georgian government entities.
After reviewing the meeting notes, the key takeaways are:
1. Cyber espionage campaign: Threat actors with ties to Belarus and Russia have conducted a cyber espionage campaign targeting over 80 organizations primarily located in Georgia, Poland, and Ukraine. The intrusions have been attributed to a threat actor known as Winter Vivern, also known as TA473 and UAC0114, and tracked by various cybersecurity firms, including Recorded Future.
2. Exploited vulnerabilities: Winter Vivern has exploited cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Roundcube webmail servers and software to gain unauthorized access to targeted mail servers, particularly government and military organizations.
3. Geopolitical interests: The cyber attacks aimed to collect intelligence on European political and military activities, with evidence of targeting Iranian embassies in Russia and the Netherlands, as well as the Georgian Embassy in Sweden. This reflects a broader geopolitical interest in assessing Iran’s diplomatic activities and monitoring Georgia’s aspirations for European Union (EU) and NATO accession.
4. Attack methods: TAG-70, the threat actor group, has demonstrated a high level of sophistication in its attack methods, leveraging social engineering techniques and exploiting Roundcube vulnerabilities to deliver JavaScript payloads designed to exfiltrate user credentials to a command-and-control (C2) server.
These takeaways highlight the severity and geopolitical implications of the cyber espionage campaign orchestrated by Winter Vivern and TAG-70.