A hacking group linked to the Russian government and high-profile cyberattacks against Democrats during the US presidential election likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through this year, according to a report released yesterday.
The malware retrieved communications and some location data from infected devices, intelligence that would have likely been used to strike artillery targets to help pro-Russian separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, the report from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said.
The findings are the latest to support a growing view among Western security officials and cybersecurity researchers that Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly relied on hacking to exert influence and attack geopolitical foes.
Photo: AP
The hacking group, known as Fancy Bear or APT 28, works primarily on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, US intelligence officials say.
The CIA and FBI say that Fancy Bear and other Russian hackers were responsible for cyberintrusions during the election that were intended to help US president-elect Donald Trump defeat US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, two senior US government officials said.
Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations.
The malware used to track Ukrainian artillery units was a variant of the kind used to hack into the Democratic National Committee, CrowdStrike cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch said in an interview.
That link, in addition to the high rate of losses sustained by the type of Ukrainian artillery units targeted by hackers, creates high confidence that Fancy Bear was responsible for the implant, he said.
“This cannot be a hands-off group or a bunch of criminals, they need to be in close communication with the Russian military,” Alperovitch said.
The implant leveraged a legitimate Android application developed by a Ukrainian artillery officer to process targeting data more quickly, CrowdStrike said.
Its deployment “extends Russian cybercapabilities to the front lines of the battlefield,” the report said, and “could have facilitated anticipatory awareness of Ukrainian artillery force troop movement, thus providing Russian forces with useful strategic planning information.”
Downloads of the legitimate app were promoted on pages used by Ukrainian artillery on VKontakte, a Russian social media Web site, CrowdStrike said.
There is no evidence the application was made available in the Android app store, limiting its distribution, the firm said.
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