A professional espionage group has targeted a variety of Eastern European governments and security organizations with attacks aimed at stealing political and state secrets, security firm FireEye stated in a report released on Tuesday.

The group, dubbed APT28 by the company, has targeted high-level officials in Eastern European countries such as Georgia, and security organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While Russian and Ukrainian cybercriminal groups are known to conduct massive campaigns aimed at stealing money and financial information, APT28 focuses solely on political information and state secrets, according to FireEye.

The report argues that the group is closely tied to Russia and likely part of Moscow’s intelligence apparatus.

“This group, unlike the China-based threat actors we track, does not appear to conduct widespread intellectual property theft for economic gain,” FireEye stated in the report. “Nor have we observed the group steal and profit from financial account information.”

While linking specific actions on the Internet to people in the real world is difficult, FireEye used the report to make the case that a variety of espionage operations can be laid on the collective keyboards of APT28 and that the group is tightly linked to Russia.

Read the Full Article: Source – Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/research-links-massive-cyber-spying-ring-to-russia/

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