Cloud Atlas Unleashes VBCloud Malware: Over 80% of Affected Targets in Russia
Dec 27, 2024
Cyber Attack / Data Theft
The cyber threat group known as Cloud Atlas has been detected utilizing a newly identified malware named VBCloud in its attack campaigns throughout 2024. According to Kaspersky researcher Oleg Kupreev, victims are infected through phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and run malware code. Notably, over 80% of the targets are based in Russia, with additional victims reported in Belarus, Canada, Moldova, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Vietnam. Cloud Atlas, also known as Clean Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Red October, is an unidentified threat actor group that has been operational since 2014. In December 2022, the group was tied to cyber attacks on Russia, Belarus, and Transnistria, deploying a PowerShell-based backdoor called PowerShower.