{"id":1929,"date":"2023-10-25T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/dr-global\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states"},"modified":"2023-10-25T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T17:30:00","slug":"kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/2023\/10\/25\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Kazakh Attackers, Disguised as Azerbaijanis, Hit Former Soviet States"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\"><\/p>\n<div><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states-1.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<div readability=\"45.983844911147\">\n<div readability=\"39.277867528271\">\n<p>A Kazakhstan attack group with a penchant for sending phishing messages is doing its dirty work in an Azerbaijani disguise.<\/p>\n<p>YoroTrooper was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.talosintelligence.com\/yorotrooper-espionage-campaign-cis-turkey-europe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">first detected<\/a> in June 2022 and often targets former Soviet republics, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, and Moldova, as well as Azerbaijan, and typically targets government entities.<\/p>\n<p>But given YoroTrooper&#8217;s language preferences, its use of Kazakhstani currency, and very limited targeting of Kazakhstani entities, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.talosintelligence.com\/attributing-yorotrooper\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">researchers from Cisco Talos<\/a> have concluded that the group is from Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers also determined &#8220;with high confidence&#8221; that YoroTrooper made numerous efforts to disguise its origin by hosting a majority of their infrastructure in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/dr-global\/targeted-attacks-on-azerbaijan-businesses-drop-malware-via-fake-image-files\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Azerbaijan<\/a>, while still targeting institutions in that country.<\/p>\n<p>Most of YoroTrooper&#8217;s operations are routed via Azerbaijan, although the attackers do not appear to speak the Azerbaijani language.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our primary observation that points toward the actor being of Kazakh origin is that they speak Kazakh and Russian, both of which are official languages of Kazakhstan,&#8221; researchers said. &#8220;YoroTrooper frequently visits websites written in Kazakh and has used Russian in debugging and logging messages in their custom Python Remote Access Trojans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"articleFooter-newsletterSignup\" readability=\"10.473404255319\">\n<p>Keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats, newly-discovered vulnerabilities, data breach information, and emerging trends. Delivered daily or weekly right to your email inbox.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"subscribe-btn dr-btn\" href=\"https:\/\/darkreading.tradepub.com\/c\/pubRD.mpl?secure=1&amp;sr=pp&amp;_t=pp:&amp;qf=w_defa3135&amp;ch=dr_eoa\" title=\"Subscribe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Subscribe<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/dr-global\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Kazakhstan attack group with a penchant for sending phishing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[809],"class_list":["post-1929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dark-reading"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true],"chromenews-featured":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true],"chromenews-large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?resize=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true],"chromenews-medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?resize=342%2C343&ssl=1",342,343,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Dark Reading","author_link":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/author\/darkreading\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/category\/uncategorized\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ddi.mohflo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/kazakh-attackers-disguised-as-azerbaijanis-hit-former-soviet-states.jpg?fit=342%2C343&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}