The Russian state-sponsored threat actor “COLDRIVER” is launching phishing campaigns against “high profile individuals in NGOs, former intelligence and military officers, and NATO governments,” according to researchers at Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG).

“COLDRIVER continues its focus on credential phishing against Ukraine, NATO countries, academic institutions and NGOs,” TAG says.

“In order to gain the trust of targets, COLDRIVER often utilizes impersonation accounts, pretending to be an expert in a particular field or somehow affiliated with the target. The impersonation account is then used to establish a rapport with the target, increasing the likelihood of the phishing campaign's success, and eventually sends a phishing link or document containing a link.”

The threat actor has begun sending PDF documents with malicious links in an attempt to trick users into installing malware.

“As far back as November 2022, TAG has observed COLDRIVER sending targets benign PDF documents from impersonation accounts,” the researchers write. “COLDRIVER presents these documents as a new op-ed or other type of article that the impersonation account is looking to publish, asking for feedback from the target. When the user opens the benign PDF, the text appears encrypted. If the target responds that they cannot read the encrypted document, the COLDRIVER impersonation account responds with a link, usually hosted on a cloud storage site, to a ‘decryption’ utility for the target to use. This decryption utility, while also displaying a decoy document, is in fact a backdoor, tracked as SPICA, giving COLDRIVER access to the victim’s machine.”

SPICA, which is written in Rust, is designed to execute arbitrary shell commands, steal browser cookies, upload and download files, and enumerate and exfiltrate documents.

KnowBe4 enables your workforce to make smarter security decisions every day. Over 65,000 organizations worldwide trust the KnowBe4 platform to strengthen their security culture and reduce human risk.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group has the story.