Former Conti Ransomware Gang Members Helped Target Ukraine, Google Says

A cybercriminal group containing former members of the notorious Conti ransomware gang is targeting the Ukrainian government and European NGOs in the region, Google says. From a report: The details come from a new blog post from the Threat Analysis Group (TAG), a team within Google dedicated to tracking state-sponsored cyber activity. With the war in Ukraine having lasted more than half a year, cyber activity including hacktivism and electronic warfare has been a constant presence in the background. Now, TAG says that profit-seeking cybercriminals are becoming active in the area in greater numbers. From April through August 2022, TAG has been following "an increasing number of financially motivated threat actors targeting Ukraine whose activities seem closely aligned with Russian government-backed attackers," writes TAG's Pierre-Marc Bureau. One of these state-backed actors has already been designated by CERT -- Ukraine's national Computer Emergency Response Team -- as UAC-0098. But new analysis from TAG links it to Conti: a prolific global ransomware gang that shut down the Costa Rican government with a cyberattack in May.

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