Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Thursday that it has seized domains used by the Russian threat actor APT29 in phishing attacks.
According to the cloud giant, some of the domains used by APT29 had names suggesting that they were AWS domains. However, Amazon and its customers’ credentials were not targeted.
Instead, AWS said, the attacks were aimed at collecting Windows credentials through Microsoft Remote Desktop. Targets included government agencies, enterprises and military organizations.
“Upon learning of this activity, we immediately initiated the process of seizing the domains APT29 was abusing which impersonated AWS in order to interrupt the operation,” said AWS CISO CJ Moses.
According to Ukraine’s CERT-UA, which issued an advisory (written in Ukrainian) on these attacks and notified AWS, the operation appears to have started in August.
APT29 sent out emails referencing integration with Amazon and Microsoft services, and the implementation of a zero trust architecture.
The messages delivered RDP configuration files that, when executed, would grant the attacker remote access to the compromised device, including access to the local disk, printers, network resources and the clipboard, and gave the attackers the ability to run malicious applications and scripts on the system.
The attacks targeted Ukraine and other countries, CERT-UA said.
APT29 is also known as Cozy Bear, the Dukes, Nobelium, and Yttrium, and it has been linked to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). It’s one of Russia’s most well known cyberespionage groups and it has been tied to many high-profile attacks.
Google’s security researchers reported recently that APT29 has been observed using exploits that were identical or very similar to those used by commercial spyware makers NSO Group and Intellexa.
Google Cloud’s Mandiant reported earlier this year that APT29 had targeted political parties in Germany.
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