While many rumors are circulating about a new massive mobilization in Russia, hackers have taken advantage of the panic effect to create a site to steal citizens’ data.
Panic makes you lose all notion of caution, and hackers know how to take advantage of human weaknesses. ” A massive campaign – according to In2security experts, January 12, 2023 – data theft of Russian citizens was launched by hackers. The latter circulated a file containing an alleged list of future mobilized by the Kremlin.
Many rumors suggest that Vladimir Putin would like to send 500,000 additional soldiers to the Ukrainian front, after the Russian army lost nearly 100,000 men in 9 months, according to the American Ministry of Defense. While the last mobilization caused a massive flight of several hundred thousand men, the fear of a new call to arms has been driving Russian social networks for several weeks.
The hackers launched their campaign on Telegram, a platform favored by the population. A document, hosted on a site – now offline – claimed to hold the list of people called to go to the front. The page in question had already been used in a previous phishing operation to steal credentials. Citizens could enter their information to find their name faster “. Attackers also ask to recommend this site to at least 10 friends to use it for free.
A sophisticated attack against Russian Telegram users
This technique would have quickly spread the fraudulent document, according to the company In2security. According to the researchers, it would be of one of the largest and most sophisticated attacks against Russian Telegram users recently “.
Another campaign had already been organized through the same domain name, this time to vote online for an alleged children’s drawing contest.
Sergey Golovanov, chief expert at Kaspersky, told Russian government news agency Tass that if users give their data to hackers, they can lose control of their account. The hackers would also have access to the messages and could carry out relay attacks on other users. The news of the mobilization provoked anxiety, fear, horror among Russians, according to a survey published in September by the NGO Levada. Nevertheless, many Telegram groups support the idea of a more massive summons.
This campaign has not been claimed by any collective. Ukrainian hacktivists have already carried out sophisticated hacking operations, but the organization of these offensives is rarely communicated. Phishing damage is sometimes visible several months after the data theft, during an attack affecting an IT department, for example.
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