Russia Kneecaps Ukraine Army Recruitment With Spoofed 'Civil Defense' App

Ukrainian efforts to recruit new soldiers to serve in its military in the country's war against Russia is under a two-pronged cyberattack by Kremlin-backed threat actors.

Researchers at Google's Threat Intelligence Group (TAG) and Mandiant have tracked down an active campaign that uses a spoofed version of the legitimate Ukrainian-language tool "Civil Defense," a crowdsourced mapping tool used to locate military recruiters. Attackers are using the fake version to perform dual malicious actions — dropping malware and delivering misinformation.

The hybrid op, which researchers named UNC5812, uses a Telegram channel to lure perspective recruits to a download the malicious version of "Civil Defense" from a spoofed site, outside of the confines of Google Play. Once downloaded, the application drops Windows and Android malware.

Russian Opp Uses Malware With a Side of Social Engineering

Windows users who make their way to the fake "Civil Defense" site to download the tool will be delivered the Pronsis Loader, which then starts a chain to deliver a malicious mapping application called Sunspinner, as well as an infostealer called Purestealer.

Android users, on the other hand, get a common user backdoor called Craxsrat, in addition to Sunspinner.

"Notably, the Civil Defense website also contains an unconventional form of social engineering designed to preempt user suspicions about APK delivery outside of the App Store and justify the extensive permissions required for the Craxsrat installation," the report noted. "The website's FAQ contains a strained justification for the Android application being hosted outside the App Store, suggesting it is an effort to 'protect the anonymity and security' of its users, and directing them to a set of accompanying video instructions."

The video also provides instructions on how to disable Google Play Protect.

"While the Civil Defense website also advertises support for macOS and iPhones, only Windows and Android payloads were available at the time of analysis," the report said.

Sunspinner, a decoy graphical user interface (GUI) application written using the Flutter framework, offers functionality aimed to convince victims that the application is legitimate.

"Consistent with the functionality advertised on the [legitimate] Civil Defense website, Sunspinner is capable of displaying crowdsourced markers with the locations of the Ukrainian military recruiters, with an option for users to add their own markers," according to the Google TAG analysis. But the fake map offers only fake locations: "However, despite possessing the limited functionality required for users to register and add markers, the displayed map does not appear to have any genuine user inputs. All markers present [were pulled from the attacker's C2 and] were added on the same day by the same user."

Parallel Anti-Mobilization Effort Against Ukrainian Military

In tandem with the espionage effort, the other goal of the Russian fake Civil Defense campaign is to deliver disinformation aimed at suppressing Ukraine's military mobilization effort for the war. The malicious versions of Civil Defense's site and Telegram have pushed out videos with incendiary, anti-Ukrainian-military titles like, "Unfair Actions From Territorial Recruitment Centers," the TAG Mandiant report added.

Users who click on the button provided by the Russian hacker-operated site to "Send Material," ostensibly to discredit recruitment efforts, are automatically fed an attacker-controlled chat thread," the report said. "Anti-mobilization content cross-posted to the group's website and Telegram channel appears to be sourced from wider pro-Russian social media ecosystems. In at least one instance, a video shared by UNC5812 was shared a day later by the Russian Embassy in South Africa's X account."

Russia has consistently used cyberattacks as part of its war strategy against Ukraine, as well as against other governments, including a recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack campaign against shipping ports in Japan. Russian hackers have also been working feverishly to distribute disinformation ahead of the US 2024 election. The threat group currently understood to be most actively, and directly, supporting Russian military activities in Ukraine is Sandworm, but, as this newly uncovered "Civilian Defense" campaign highlights, that's just one of many hacker groups doing the Kremlin's dirty work in cyberspace.