A previously unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) group named Red Stinger has been identified, targeting Eastern European entities such as military, transportation, critical infrastructure, and those involved in the September East Ukraine referendums. The attackers have managed to exfiltrate various types of data, including snapshots, USB drives, keyboard strokes, and microphone recordings.
Red Stinger overlaps with another threat cluster called Bad Magic, which targeted government, agriculture, and transportation organizations in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea. While there were indications of Red Stinger’s activity since at least September 2021, new findings push their origins back to December 2020.
The attack chain of Red Stinger involves the use of malicious installer files to drop the DBoxShell implant on compromised systems. Subsequent attacks in April and September 2021 followed similar patterns with minor variations.
A significant wave of attacks occurred in February 2022 during Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, and the last known activity associated with Red Stinger took place in September 2022. The malware DBoxShell utilizes cloud storage services as a command-and-control mechanism, serving as an entry point for attackers to assess the interest of their targets.
The exact scale of infections remains unclear, but evidence points to two victims in central Ukraine, a military target, and an officer in critical infrastructure, who were compromised during the February 2022 attacks. The attackers exfiltrated screenshots, microphone recordings, office documents, and logged keystrokes from these victims.
The September 2022 intrusion focused primarily on Russia-aligned regions, targeting officers and individuals involved in elections. Red Stinger also infected a library in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, although the motivations behind the campaign are unknown.
The origins of the Red Stinger threat group remain mysterious, but it was discovered that the threat actors inadvertently or for testing purposes infected their own Windows 10 machines in December 2022, providing insights into their activities. Notable characteristics include the choice of English as the default language and the use of the Fahrenheit temperature scale, suggesting the involvement of native English speakers.
Attribution of the attack to a specific country is challenging, as victims aligned with both Russia and Ukraine were targeted. The primary motive of the attack appears to be surveillance and data gathering, as evidenced by the extensive toolset and targeted approach used by the attackers.
