Researchers warn that a cyberespionage group linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, has recently launched a spear-phishing campaign targeting one of Germany’s major political parties. This is a departure from the group’s typical targeting of government agencies and foreign diplomatic missions and could expand to other countries beyond Germany.
According to an analysis by incident response firm Mandiant, the phishing attacks impersonated Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and invited recipients to a dinner reception. A malicious link in the email directed users to a malware dropper that eventually deployed a new variant of a backdoor program recently added to APT29’s arsenal.
