Russian Hackers Exploit Secure Messaging Apps Amid Ukraine Conflict

Ukraine-Russia Conflict: The battle on the ground turned into hacking, Russia hacked these two messaging apps to spy on Ukraine

Russian state-backed cyber attackers are targeting Ukrainian military and government officials’ secure messaging applications, such as Signal Messenger and WhatsApp, to spy on them. Google has made this disclosure in a recent report. Hackers are abusing Signal’s “Linked Devices” feature, which allows the same account to be used on more than one device.

How is this cyber attack happening?

• How is this cyber attack happening?
• Usually, linking a new device requires scanning a QR code.
• Hackers are creating fake QR codes and presenting them as Signal’s group invites or device-pairing instructions.
• If a victim scans this QR code, his account gets linked to the hackers’ device.
• After this, all new messages are received by both the victim and the attacker simultaneously, allowing the attacker to read sensitive chats without any device access.

According to Google’s report, these QR codes are often embedded on phishing pages that resemble Signal’s official website. Apart from this, they are also being spread by imitating special military apps like “Kropyva” used by Ukrainian soldiers.

Devices recovered from the battlefield are also being made into weapons

Google also reported that Russian soldiers have been ordered to link the devices of Ukrainian soldiers seized during the war to the attackers’ servers, so that they can later be used in cyber attacks. A Microsoft report has revealed that the Russian hacker group Star Blizzard (UNC4057) is also trying to hack WhatsApp accounts in the same way. Google said that hackers are constantly finding new ways to penetrate the secure messaging platform, which can pose a major threat to the privacy of users.

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