Cozy Bear

Cozy Bear, also known as APT29 and Midnight Blizzard, is a threat actor believed to be linked to the Russian government. This entity has been behind numerous cyberattacks with malicious intent, targeting various organizations and systems worldwide. The first significant intrusion attributed to Cozy Bear was detected in the summer of 2015 when they breached the Democratic National Committee (DNC) network. A separate breach by another threat group, Fancy Bear, occurred in April 2016. Post these breaches, Russia used a persona named Guccifer 2.0 to release data from attacks attributed to Fancy Bear, Cozy Bear, or other Russian Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). Cozy Bear's activities continued beyond the DNC breach. The StellarParticle campaign saw the group using novel tools and techniques against multiple organizations, as identified by CrowdStrike incident responders and their Intelligence team. In addition, Cozy Bear was responsible for a password spray attack on Microsoft, compromising its corporate email systems earlier this year. The group then launched a large-scale spear-phishing campaign, targeting over 1,000 users across more than 100 organizations for intelligence gathering. The threat actor's activities have not slowed down. Recently, US and UK cyber agencies warned of a mass scale campaign by Cozy Bear targeting vulnerable Zimbra and JetBrains TeamCity servers. Furthermore, Google's Threat Analysis Group observed the group's activities, and TeamViewer discovered a breach in its corporate network attributed to Cozy Bear. The group, along with another threat actor called Scattered Spider, has shown proficiency in navigating multiple operating systems and security platforms, often targeting Azure services for data theft. Their ongoing activities highlight the need for robust cybersecurity measures to counter such threats.