APT29 Exploited a Windows Feature to Compromise European Diplomatic Entity Network

The Russia-linked APT29 nation-state actor has been found leveraging a “lesser-known” Windows feature called Credential Roaming following a successful phishing attack against an unnamed European diplomatic entity.

“The diplomatic-centric targeting is consistent with Russian strategic priorities as well as historic APT29 targeting,” Mandiant researcher Thibault Van Geluwe de Berlaere said in a technical write-up.

APT29, a Russian espionage group also called Cosy Bear, Iron Hemlock, and The Dukes, is known for its intrusions aimed at collecting intelligence that align with the country’s strategic objectives. It’s believed to be sponsored by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

Some of the adversarial collective’s cyber activities are tracked publicly under the moniker Nobelium, a threat cluster responsible for the widespread supply chain compromise through SolarWinds software in December 2020.

The Google-owned threat intelligence and incident response firm said it identified the use of Credential Roaming during the time APT29 was present inside the victim network in early 2022, at which point “numerous LDAP queries with atypical properties” were performed against the Active Directory system.

images from Hacker News