Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cyberwarfare

Pre-Deepfake Campaign Targets Putin Critics

Russia is continuing its campaign of disinformation around the Ukraine war through advanced social engineering delivered by a threat group tracked as TA499.

Russia is continuing its campaign of disinformation around the Ukraine war through advanced social engineering delivered by a threat group tracked as TA499.

According to a report from Proofpoint, TA499 targets US and European politicians, and leading businessmen and celebrities who have spoken out against Putin’s invasion. The primary purpose is to persuade the victims to take part in phone calls or video chats from which pro-Putin snippets can be elicited and published – thereby discrediting any previous anti-Putin comments.

It continues Russia’s efforts to fracture anti-Russian sentiment in North America and the EU with campaigns of disinformation. The European Parliament already contains numerous members opposed to any pro-Ukrainian activity – and Russia seeks to build on this.

TA499 appears to be a two-person group of operators publicly known as Vovan and Lexus. It is not known how closely they are tied to the Russian government. However, their operations are sophisticated, complex, and do not seem to be financially motivated. Proofpoint classifies them as ‘patriotically motivated’ and ‘aligned with the Russian state’.

The operation begins with TA499 making email or phone contact with their targets. Although this activity began before the invasion of Ukraine, “TA499’s campaigns began to ramp up in late January 2022, culminating in increasingly aggressive attempts after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February 2022,” say the researchers.

By March 2022, emails or phone calls began to masquerade as the Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and his supposed assistant. Emails pretended to come from official embassies. with subjects such as ‘Prime Minister of Ukraine Request’. For example (although not proven, but assessed with ‘high confidence’, to be TA499), the UK Secretary of State for Defense, Ben Wallace, tweeted on March 17, 2022, “Today an attempt was made by an imposter claiming to be Ukrainian PM to speak with me. He posed several misleading questions and after becoming suspicious I terminated the call.”

Other approaches from TA499, pre-dating the Ukraine invasion, have targeted individuals that have made positive statements about the imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny – emails have masqueraded as messages from Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff.

The purpose of such contacts is to persuade the target to join a telephone conversation or remote video call with TA499. If successful, the group engages in conversation with the attempt to elicit contradictory statements designed to discredit earlier anti-Kremlin statements. Proofpoint does not believe that TA499 has used deepfake technology in these exchanges, instead relying on an actor – for example, ‘Lexus’ pretended to be Volkov in Navalny-themed attacks.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Lexus (left) impersonating Volkov (right)

If successful, the recordings have been made public; for example, on YouTube and RuTube. “There are videos already publicly available of previous successful interactions,” the researchers told SecurityWeek. But they believe the YouTube recordings have already been taken down.

“According to open-source reporting, the following have been targets of the threat actor we track as TA499,” the researchers told SecurityWeek: “The mayor of Vienna Michael Ludwig, as well as other mayors in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Madrid. Celebrities JK Rowling and Elton John have also been targeted in the past.

“Overall, TA499 has not targeted based on government roles,” they continued, “but based on comments being made about the Russia-Ukraine war, general negative commentary about Russia and Putin, and involvement of government officials, celebrities, or prominent individuals running charities in support of Ukraine. “

Some reports have suggested that TA499 has used deepfake technology. Proofpoint cannot confirm this, but warns that even if they haven’t, they are likely to do at some point in the future. This threat, and other similar threats, will only become more effective as the technology improves. “There is a likelihood that if TA499 has not already adopted deepfakes, they will at some point,” said the researchers.

It is possible that TA499 started as a patriotic prankster group. “They have personas that not only post the material discussed in this report online but also perform reenactments on Russia state-sponsored media as well as attend conferences,” says Proofpoint “With the war between Russia and Ukraine unlikely to end in the near-term and Ukraine continuing to garner support from organizations worldwide, Proofpoint assesses with high confidence that TA499 will attempt to continue with its campaigns in support of its influencer content and political agenda.”

The war has given pranks a serious and damaging incentive. So far, it is likely that this has been achieved without the use of deepfake technology. It is, however, a clear warning on the likelihood of even more compelling social engineering attacks in the future.

Related: Deepfakes – Significant or Hyped Threat?

Related: The Lessons From Cyberwar, Cyber-in-War and Ukraine

Related: Russian Espionage APT Callisto Focuses on Ukraine War Support Organizations

Related: A Year of Conflict: Cybersecurity Industry Assesses Impact of Russia-Ukraine War

Written By

Kevin Townsend is a Senior Contributor at SecurityWeek. He has been writing about high tech issues since before the birth of Microsoft. For the last 15 years he has specialized in information security; and has had many thousands of articles published in dozens of different magazines – from The Times and the Financial Times to current and long-gone computer magazines.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cyberwarfare

WASHINGTON - Cyberattacks are the most serious threat facing the United States, even more so than terrorism, according to American defense experts. Almost half...

Cyberwarfare

Russian espionage group Nomadic Octopus infiltrated a Tajikistani telecoms provider to spy on 18 entities, including government officials and public service infrastructures.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Cyberwarfare

Several hacker groups have joined in on the Israel-Hamas war that started over the weekend after the militant group launched a major attack.

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Cyberwarfare

The war in Ukraine is the first major conflagration between two technologically advanced powers in the age of cyber. It prompts us to question...

Cybercrime

On the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cybersecurity companies summarize the cyber operations they have seen and their impact.

Application Security

Fortinet on Monday issued an emergency patch to cover a severe vulnerability in its FortiOS SSL-VPN product, warning that hackers have already exploited the...