Many profitable phishing assaults end in a monetary loss or malware an infection. However falling for some phishing scams, like these at the moment concentrating on Russians looking on-line for organizations which are combating the Kremlin conflict machine, can price you your freedom or your life.
The true web site of the Ukrainian paramilitary group “Freedom of Russia” legion. The textual content has been machine-translated from Russian.
Researchers on the safety agency Silent Push mapped a community of a number of dozen phishing domains that spoof the recruitment web sites of Ukrainian paramilitary teams, in addition to Ukrainian authorities intelligence websites.
The web site legiohliberty(.)military includes a carbon copy of the homepage for the Freedom of Russia Legion (a.okay.a. “Free Russia Legion”), a three-year-old Ukraine-based paramilitary unit made up of Russian residents who oppose Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
The phony model of that web site copies the reliable web site — legionliberty(.)military — offering an interactive Google Kind the place candidates can share their contact and private particulars. The shape asks guests to supply their title, gender, age, e-mail tackle and/or Telegram deal with, nation, citizenship, expertise within the armed forces; political opinions; motivations for becoming a member of; and any dangerous habits.
“Participation in such anti-war actions is taken into account unlawful within the Russian Federation, and taking part residents are repeatedly charged and arrested,” Silent Push wrote in a report launched immediately. “All noticed campaigns had related traits and shared a standard goal: amassing private info from site-visiting victims. Our group believes it’s doubtless that this marketing campaign is the work of both Russian Intelligence Providers or a risk actor with equally aligned motives.”
Silent Push’s Zach Edwards mentioned the pretend Legion Liberty web site shared a number of connections with rusvolcorps(.)internet. That area mimics the recruitment web page for a Ukrainian far-right paramilitary group known as the Russian Volunteer Corps (rusvolcorps(.)com), and makes use of an identical Google Types web page to gather info from would-be members.
Different domains Silent Push linked to the phishing scheme embrace: ciagov(.)icu, which mirrors the content material on the official web site of the U.S. Central Intelligence Company; and hochuzhitlife(.)com, which spoofs the Ministry of Protection of Ukraine & Basic Directorate of Intelligence (whose precise area is hochuzhit(.)com).
In keeping with Edwards, there aren’t any indicators that these phishing websites are being marketed by way of e-mail. Fairly, it seems these accountable are selling them by manipulating the search engine outcomes proven when somebody searches for one among these anti-Putin organizations.
In August 2024, safety researcher Artem Tamoian posted on Twitter/X about how he obtained startlingly completely different outcomes when he looked for “Freedom of Russia legion” in Russia’s largest home search engine Yandex versus Google.com. The highest outcome returned by Google was the legion’s precise web site, whereas the primary outcome on Yandex was a phishing web page concentrating on the group.
“I feel at the very least a few of them are certainly promoted by way of search,” Tamoian mentioned of the phishing domains. “My first thread on that accuses Yandex, however other than Yandex these web sites are constantly ranked above reliable in DuckDuckGo and Bing. Initially, I didn’t understand the dimensions of it. They maintain showing to this present day.”
The outcomes of a search at DuckDuckGo on Mar. 27, 2025 for “Freedom of Russia legion” exhibits the primary outcome returned is a phishing area.
Tamoian, a local Russian who left the nation in 2019, is the founding father of the cyber investigation platform malfors.com. He lately found two different websites impersonating the Ukrainian paramilitary teams — legionliberty(.)world and rusvolcorps(.)ru — and reported each to Cloudflare. When Cloudflare responded by blocking the websites with a phishing warning, the actual Web tackle of those websites was uncovered as belonging to a identified “bulletproof internet hosting” community known as Stark Industries Options Ltd.
Stark Industries Options appeared two weeks earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, materializing out of nowhere with lots of of hundreds of Web addresses in its steady — a lot of them initially assigned to Russian authorities organizations. In Might 2024, KrebsOnSecurity revealed a deep dive on Stark, which has repeatedly been used to host infrastructure for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults, phishing, malware and disinformation campaigns from Russian intelligence companies and pro-Kremlin hacker teams.
In March 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court docket designated the Freedom of Russia legion as a terrorist group, which means that Russians caught speaking with the group might face between 10 and 20 years in jail.
Tamoian mentioned these looking on-line for details about these paramilitary teams have turn into simple prey for Russian safety providers.
“I began trying into these phishing web sites, as a result of I saved stumbling upon information that somebody will get arrested for attempting to affix (the) Ukrainian Military or for attempting to assist them,” Tamoian advised KrebsOnSecurity. “I’ve additionally seen reviews (of) FSB contacting individuals impersonating Ukrainian officers, in addition to utilizing pretend Telegram bots, so I believed pretend web sites is likely to be an choice as nicely.”
Search outcomes displaying information articles about individuals in Russia being sentenced to prolonged jail phrases for trying to assist Ukrainian paramilitary teams.
Tamoian mentioned reviews floor repeatedly in Russia about individuals being arrested for attempting perform an motion requested by a “Ukrainian recruiter,” with the courts unfailingly imposing harsh sentences whatever the defendant’s age.
“This retains occurring repeatedly, however often there aren’t any particulars about how precisely the individual will get caught,” he mentioned. “All instances associated to state treason (and) terrorism are labeled, so there are barely any particulars.”
Tamoian mentioned whereas he has no direct proof linking any of the reported arrests and convictions to those phishing websites, he’s sure the websites are half of a bigger marketing campaign by the Russian authorities.
“Contemplating that they maintain them alive and maintain spawning extra, I assume it is likely to be an environment friendly factor,” he mentioned. “They’re on prime of DuckDuckGo and Yandex, so it sadly works.”
Additional studying: Silent Push report, Russian Intelligence Focusing on its Residents and Informants.
