Eastwind

Eastwind is a threat actor that has been under investigation by Kaspersky researchers due to its malicious activities. The campaign, dubbed "EastWind", was discovered during an investigation into devices infected via phishing emails containing malicious shortcut attachments. This threat actor has been particularly active in targeting Russian government entities, although the direct involvement of Eastwind with these attacks has not been explicitly confirmed by Kaspersky. The EastWind campaign has demonstrated the use of tools from different threat actors, indicating the collaboration and sharing of malware tools and knowledge among Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups. This practice is common within the cybersecurity landscape and further complicates the attribution of cyberattacks. Although no specific group has been directly linked to the EastWind campaign, Kaspersky noted the presence of malware from multiple groups in the attacks. One notable tool used in the EastWind campaign is a Trojan known as "GrewApacha", which has been associated with the APT31 group, a China-nexus actor. GrewApacha has been in use since at least 2021, and Kaspersky observed the threat actor behind EastWind using this malware to collect information about infected systems and to install additional malicious payloads. This indicates that EastWind is not only capable of sophisticated cyber espionage but also has access to advanced tools and techniques shared among APT groups.