North Koreas Lazarus Group Targets Russian Companies For First Time

In an unusual development, the group known for its attacks against companies in countries viewed as geopolitical foes is now going after companies in a country considered an ally, Check Point Software says.

North Koreas Lazarus Group, known for its sophisticated cyberattacks on organizations in the US, South Korea, Japan, and other countries, has for the first time begun targeting companies in Russia.
Researchers from Check Point Software Technologies uncovered the attacks recently when investigating multiple malicious Office documents that appeared crafted specifically for use against Russian entities. Check Points analysis showed that the documents were part of an infection chain designed to drop an updated version of KEYMARBLE, a backdoor associated with the Lazarus Group.
Lotem Finkelshtein, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point, says the companys researchers observed at least three distinct Lazarus Group attacks targeting Russia in the last week of January. At this point, there isnt enough information to know whether the attacks were directed at a single company or different entities, he says.
Each of the attacks involved the use of emails with US-themed documents that were designed to trick recipients into triggering macros for downloading malicious code. One of the documents purported to be a nondisclosure agreement for StarForce Technologies, a Russia-based company with offices in the US. Another was designed to appear like a Los Angeles court document.
At the moment, the reasons for the Lazarus Groups
sudden interest
in Russian companies are not clear. Many security researchers consider the group to be one of the most active and dangerous threat actors in the world. The group is well-known for its 2014 attack on Sony Pictures in the US; the theft of tens of millions of dollars from the Bank of Bangladesh and other banks; and attacks on several cryptocurrency exchanges in recent years.
But so far, at least, the Lazarus Group has steered cleared of entities in Russia, a country generally perceived as a North Korea ally. This is actually quite surprising, Finkelshtein says. We tend to believe this is somehow tied to financial theft or IP theft.
Generally, security researchers have a hard time attributing attacks with certainty to a specific threat group or attacker. However, the tactics, techniques, and tools used in the attacks against the Russian companies indicate very strongly that the Lazarus Group is behind them, Finkelshtein notes.
For instance, the KEYMARBLE backdoor used in the attacks in Russia is a remote administration tool that the Lazarus Group is known to have developed for stealing information from compromised systems. Similarly, the compromised server that is being used to host and download the malware is a system it has used in previous campaigns.
The Lazarus Group attacks on Russian companies that Check Point observed coincide with another campaign by the group dubbed Operation Extreme Job, targeting companies in South Korea. The timeline of that campaign, reported by security firm
ESTSecurity
, overlaps with the attacks in Russia, Check Point said.
However, the two campaigns appear to be completely separate from each other and once again suggest that the Lazarus Group is operating as at least two smaller subgroups, Check Point said in its report. Security researchers have for sometime suspected that Lazarus Group has one subgroup called Andariel, which focuses on attacking South Korean companies, and a second outfit named Bluenoroff, focused on financial theft and global cyber espionage campaigns.
Related Content:
Lazarus Group Builds its First MacOS Malware
Inside the North Korean Hacking Operation Behind SWIFT Bank Attacks
The Opsec Fail That Helped Unmask a North Korean State Hacker
2019 Attacker Playbook

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industrys most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the
Interop agenda
here.

Last News
▸ ArcSight prepares for future at user conference post HP acquisition. ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Samsung Epic 4G: First To Use Media Hub ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Many third-party software fails security tests ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
North Koreas Lazarus Group Targets Russian Companies For First Time