Ukrainian military companies deal with a new wave of phishing attacks – report

Source: State Service of Special Communications

Ukrainian military sector companies and security agencies have become targets of a new wave of cyberattacks exposed by CERT-UA, the governmental emergency response team under the State Service of Special Communications.

The attack started with phishing emails disguised as official messages from the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. These emails purportedly invited recipients to a conference on transitioning Ukraine’s defense industry to NATO technical standards, allegedly scheduled for December 5 in Kyiv.

The emails came with an attached file called “Attachment contains important information for your participation”.  which, if open, deployed malware onto the recipients’s devices.

The State Service of Special Communications has traced down the attack to the UAC-0185 group of hackers, who have been active since 2022. Their cyberattacks have targeted messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp, as well as military-related platforms such as Delta, Teneta, and Kropyva.

This group was earlier found to launch spearfishing campaigns trying to steal data from computers of employees at defense enterprises and Ukrainian security agencies.