ESET Research APT Report: Russian cyberattacks in Ukraine intensify; Sandworm unleashes new destructive wiper

• ESET has released its latest advanced persistent threat (APT) report.
• Russian APT groups intensified attacks against Ukraine and the EU, exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities and deploying wipers.
• China-aligned groups like Mustang Panda and DigitalRecyclers continued their espionage campaigns targeting the EU government and maritime sectors.
• North Korea-aligned groups expanded their financially motivated campaigns using fake job listings and social engineering.

/EIN News/ -- BRATISLAVA, Slovakia, May 20, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ESET Research has released its latest APT Activity Report, which highlights activities of select APT groups that were documented by ESET researchers from October 2024 through March 2025. During the monitored period, Russia-aligned threat actors, notably Sednit and Gamaredon, maintained aggressive campaigns primarily targeting Ukraine and EU countries. Ukraine was subjected to the greatest intensity of cyberattacks against the country’s critical infrastructure and governmental institutions. The Russia-aligned Sandworm group intensified destructive operations against Ukrainian energy companies, deploying a new wiper named ZEROLOT. China-aligned threat actors continued engaging in persistent espionage campaigns with a focus on European organizations.

Gamaredon remained the most prolific actor targeting Ukraine, enhancing malware obfuscation and introducing PteroBox, a file stealer leveraging Dropbox. “The infamous Sandworm group concentrated heavily on compromising Ukrainian energy infrastructure. In recent cases, it deployed the ZEROLOT wiper in Ukraine. For this, the attackers abused Active Directory Group Policy in the affected organizations,” says ESET Director of Threat Research Jean-Ian Boutin.

Sednit refined its exploitation of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in webmail services, expanding Operation RoundPress from Roundcube to include Horde, MDaemon, and Zimbra. ESET discovered that the group successfully leveraged a zero-day vulnerability in MDaemon Email Server (CVE-2024-11182) against Ukrainian companies. Several Sednit attacks against defense companies located in Bulgaria and Ukraine used spearphishing email campaigns as a lure. Another Russia-aligned group, RomCom, demonstrated advanced capabilities by deploying zero-day exploits against Mozilla Firefox (CVE 2024 9680) and Microsoft Windows (CVE 2024 49039).

In Asia, China-aligned APT groups continued their campaigns against governmental and academic institutions. At the same time, North Korea-aligned threat actors significantly increased their operations directed at South Korea, placing particular emphasis on individuals, private companies, embassies, and diplomatic personnel. Mustang Panda remained the most active, targeting governmental institutions and maritime transportation companies via Korplug loaders and malicious USB drives. DigitalRecyclers continued targeting EU governmental entities, employing the KMA VPN anonymization network and deploying the RClient, HydroRShell, and GiftBox backdoors. PerplexedGoblin used its new espionage backdoor, which ESET named NanoSlate, against a Central European government entity, while Webworm targeted a Serbian government organization using SoftEther VPN, emphasizing the continued popularity of this tool among China-aligned groups.

Elsewhere in Asia, North Korea-aligned threat actors were particularly active in financially motivated campaigns. DeceptiveDevelopment significantly broadened its targeting, using fake job listings primarily within the cryptocurrency, blockchain, and finance sectors. The group employed innovative social engineering techniques to distribute the multiplatform WeaselStore malware. The Bybit cryptocurrency theft, attributed by the FBI to TraderTraitor APT group, involved a supply-chain compromise of Safe{Wallet} that caused losses of approximately USD 1.5 billion. Meanwhile, other North Korea-aligned groups saw fluctuations in their operational tempo: In early 2025, Kimsuky and Konni returned to their usual activity levels after a noticeable decline at the end of 2024, shifting their targeting away from English-speaking think tanks, NGOs, and North Korea experts to focus primarily on South Korean entities and diplomatic personnel; and Andariel resurfaced, after a year of inactivity, with a sophisticated attack against a South Korean industrial software company.

Iran-aligned APT groups maintained their primary focus on the Middle East region, predominantly targeting governmental organizations and entities within the manufacturing and engineering sectors in Israel. Additionally, ESET observed a significant global uptick in cyberattacks against technology companies, largely attributed to increased activity by North Korea-aligned DeceptiveDevelopment.

“The highlighted operations are representative of the broader threat landscape that we investigated during this period. They illustrate the key trends and developments, and contain only a small fraction of the cybersecurity intelligence data provided to customers of ESET APT reports,” adds Boutin.

Intelligence shared in the private reports is primarily based on proprietary ESET telemetry data and has been verified by ESET researchers, who prepare in-depth technical reports and frequent activity updates detailing activities of specific APT groups. These threat intelligence analyses, known as ESET APT Reports PREMIUM, assist organizations tasked with protecting citizens, critical national infrastructure, and high-value assets from criminal and nation-state-directed cyberattacks. More information about ESET APT Reports PREMIUM and its delivery of high-quality, actionable tactical and strategic cybersecurity threat intelligence is available at the ESET Threat Intelligence page.

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Media contact:
                    Jessica Beffa
                    jessica.beffa@eset.com
                    720-413-4938