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RUSSIAN APT 'BLUECHARLIE' SWAPS INFRASTRUCTURE TO EVADE DETECTION

Despite being outed earlier this year, the advanced persistent threat group is
trying to sneak past researchers again.
Nate Nelson
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
August 02, 2023
Source: Chris Van Lennep via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


In a futile attempt to evade detection, the Russian espionage group
"BlueCharlie" has swapped out all of its old infrastructure for a network of 94
new domains.



BlueCharlie — aka "Calisto," "COLDRIVER," "SEABORGIUM," and "StarBlizzard" — is
a threat actor linked to groups that have been active since at least 2017. In
the past, it has targeted organizations across the government, defense,
education, and political sectors, as well as NGOs, think tanks, and journalists.
Though focused on espionage, it has also been known to perform hack-and-leak
operations.

At the turn of the year, one by one, researchers began to out BlueCharlie
— describing its campaigns, its impact on the Russia-Ukraine war, breaking down
its infrastructure, and even attributing a specific person running the show.

According to Recorded Future, in BlueCharlie's latest campaign, the group
completely switched up its infrastructure, creating nearly 100 new domains from
which to perform credential harvesting and follow-on espionage attacks.




BLUECHARLIE'S NEW DOMAINS

In prior campaigns, BlueCharlie used a tool called Evilginx to help name their
phishing domains. A threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future's Insikt
Group, who chose to remain anonymous for this story, explains how.



"This framework uses any arbitrarily defined, user-supplied domain, and appends
a victim-specific URL to the end of that domain. For example, if a threat actor
creates a phishing domain, goo-ink[.]online, emulating a Google domain, they can
then append a URL structure, like adfs[.]llnl[.]gov — which emulates the
Microsoft Active Directory of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — to create
the full phishing URL of http[:]//goo-ink[.]online/adfs[.]llnl[.]gov," in order
to dupe a Lawrence Livermore National Lab employee into believing the link is
legitimate. Lawrence Livermore became a target of BlueCharlie last year.

In rare cases, they add, "the group did employ fully emulated domains of
victims," in line with more traditional phishing.



In its latest activity, BlueCharlie used neither the tailing URL structure nor
fully emulated domains. Instead, the group named its domains by combining two,
seemingly random IT-related terms — say, "storage" and "gateway" — with a hyphen
in the middle.


CHANGING TTPS TO EVADE RESEARCHERS

"People would be less likely to fall for general IT-related domains," the
Recorded Future analyst acknowledged, adding fuel to the theory that these
changes were made primarily for the sake of change itself.



Breakdown of terms used in BlueCharlie activity since November 2022. (Source:
Recorded Future)

"Historically speaking, certain Russian state-sponsored groups such as
BlueBravo, BlueDelta, and more have evolved their TTPs extremely quickly," the
analyst explains. This time, though, the attackers may simply have adjusted
their TTPs in direct response to their prior TTPs being exposed.

"On numerous past occasions, we have directly observed threat actors changing
their infrastructure or TTPs in short order following exposure, and that this
isn't unique to BlueCharlie/Russian groups — we've seen it from other APT groups
as well, so we are confident that they are reacting to exposure," they say.

To defend against ever-changing APT tactics, the authors of the report
recommended that organizations practice general cyber hygiene — training
employees, disabling macros, and using FIDO2-compliant MFA tokens. "BlueCharlie
has demonstrated the ability to adapt and evolve over time to public reporting,"
the authors wrote, "and will likely continue to change their TTPs based on past
precedent."

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