Slovak company security group ESET has discovered a new state-sponsored hacking group (these groups are also known as APTs). Dubbed XDSpy, the group managed to remain undetected for nearly nine years before its activities were discovered.
The team's work was first presented today by ESET researchers in a speech at the Virus Bulletin 2020 security conference.
ESET stated that the group's main interest was in identifying and theft documents. Its targets were government agencies and private companies in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
The target countries were Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine, according to ESET telemetry data, but there are other XDSpy functions that have not been discovered.
ESET reports that the group's activities have ceased after tracking its activities and a detailed safety report sent in the CERT Belarus team.
Using this security alert as an initial indication, ESET was able to reveal previous XDSpy features. Matthieu Faou and Francis Labelle, two ESET security researchers who led the XDSpy investigation, said the team's main tool was a malware toolkit called XDDown.
The malware, described by Faou as “not the latest technologys”, could infect its victims and help the team collect sensitive data from the infected targets.
ESET describes XDDown as a "download program" used to infect a victim and then to download secondary tools that performed various specialized tasks.
Let's look at the tools that ESET has discovered
XDREcon - tool for scanning an infected server, collecting technical specifications and operating system details and sending the data back to the XDDown / XDSpy command and control server.
XDList - tool for searching files with specific file extensions (files related to Office, PDF and address books).
XDMonitor - a tool that tracks the type of devices connected to an infected host.
XDUpload - tool that uploads stolen files to XDXpy server.
XDLoc – tool to gather information from nearby WiFi networks, information believed to have been used to monitoring movements of victims using maps of public WiFi networks.
XDPass - a tool that extracted passwords from locally installed browsers.
