Russia-backed Threat Actors Target IT Companies

In the latest report by Microsoft, Russia has compromised the systems of at least fourteen (14) IT service providers so far this year. Nobelium, a Russian state-backed hacking organization, attacked upwards of 140 cloud, managed, and IT service providers and successfully gained access to fourteen (14) of them. Tactics of this operation included numerous spear-phishing campaigns alongside password-spraying attacks against employee’s and executives of these service providers. Once compromised, Nobelium actors could access client data and break the trust between the client and service provider. Additionally, between July 1, 2021, and present day, Nobelium has targeted roughly 600 customers numerous times, with an approximate grand total of 22,800 times. These attacks not only utilized password-spraying and spear-phishing tactics, but also incorporated API manipulation and token theft. Remediation efforts for these attacks is ensuring that companies have multi-factor authentication (MFA) configured throughout the organization as well as verifying trusted users with administrative account rights.