Information about APT targets financial analysts in Russia and neighboring countries

On April 20, Proofpoint observed a targeted campaign focused on financial analysts working at top global financial firms operating in Russia and neighboring countries. These analysts were linked by their coverage of the telecommunications industry, making this targeting very similar to, and likely a continuation of, activity described in our “In Pursuit of Optical Fibers and Troop Intel ” blog. This time, however, attackers opportunistically used spearphishing emails with a Microsoft Word attachment exploiting the recently patched CVE-2017-0199 to deploy the ZeroT Trojan, which in turn downloaded the PlugX Remote Access Trojan (RAT).