Zebrocy Go

Zebrocy is an APT group, which is believed to work alongside Fancy Bear (also known as Safocy and APT28.) Cybersecurity experts have noticed a lot of similarities in the tools and infrastructure used by both of these groups, as well as that both groups attacked similar targets in a short period. The Zebrocy group has attracted a lot of attention from security researchers because of the group’s tendency to work with a broad range of programming languages, and developing several versions of their tools by using both classic and contemporary languages. The Zebrocy Go downloader is a recent example of the group utilizing Google’s Go language to create threatening software – the downloader also has been developed in Delphi and the AutoIt scripting language, but the Zebrocy Go variant appears to be the most functional one.

The Zebrocy Go downloader is likely to be distributed to victims with the help of a ‘.lnk’ file that is disguised as a Microsoft Office document. Naturally, the preferred method to deliver this document to potential victims is to use spear-phishing emails. Upon launch, the file would execute PowerShell code that displays a decoy document, and also initializes the Zebrocy Go downloader in the background.

The purpose of Zebrocy Go is to collect information about the compromised host, as well as to receive instructions on what payload it should deliver. Collecting the system information is done in a rather basic way – the threatening program uses the ‘systeminfo utility’ to gather all required details. The data is then sent out to a remote Command & Control server – the response from the attacker’s server contains instructions on how to proceed with the attack.

The Zebrocy Go’s activity has been detected in a long list of ex-USSR and Central Asian countries, and the preferred targets of the attackers appear to be government bodies. One of the reasons why the Zebrocy group might be experimenting with different languages is because they may be planning to expand their operations and target other operating systems too – currently, their primary targets are Windows systems, but it would not be a surprise if Linux and MacOS are added to their target list in the future.