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Sandworm-Linked UAC-0145 Uses Fake Job Interviews to Push VPN That Can Run Commands
CERT-UA says Sandworm-linked UAC-0145 poses as recruiters in fake job interviews to deliver a trojanized WireGuard VPN that runs attacker commands on victims' hosts.
CERT-UA attributes the campaign, ongoing since May 2026, to UAC-0145, a subgroup within GRU-affiliated Sandworm (APT44). Posing as HR staff of firms like ATLAS Business Group and Sopra Steria Bulgaria, attackers lure Ukrainian IT specialists into Zoom interviews, then share failing WireGuard configs and push a custom SopraVPN client from SourceForge. The modified WireGuard build supports a non-standard SymmetricKey option holding AES-256-GCM-encrypted PowerShell, decrypted with the decoded PrivateKey and executed via runScriptCommand. A scheduled task then downloads a second-stage payload on Windows, while the Linux variant fetches it via cURL.
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Lazarus hackers pair fake job offers with Windows zero-day exploit
Lazarus' Operation Dream Job targets the defense sector with fake job offers, a Windows LPE zero-day (CVE-2026-68820), and new Troy and RelayShell backdoors.
Check Point documented two parallel infection chains in Lazarus' Operation Dream Job: a digitally signed PDF viewer with DLL sideloading delivering the MISTPEN in-memory downloader, and a trojanized SecurityPDF viewer, distributed via fake Enveil websites, installing the newly documented Troy backdoor. A component exploits CVE-2026-68820, a local privilege escalation zero-day in the Windows AFD.sys driver used since at least early July, which Microsoft patched on August 11, 2026, enabling deployment of the FudModule kernel-mode rootkit. Lazarus also compromised Roundcube webmail servers vulnerable to CVE-2025-49113 to deploy the RelayShell PHP web shell and relay C2 traffic, targeting defense-sector organizations primarily in Western Europe and India. Separately, CERT-UA documented Sandworm's UAC-0145 using fake job offers against IT professionals since May 2026.
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