CISA and International Partners Release Advisory on Russia-based Threat Actor Group, Star Blizzard

Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—in coordination with the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (UK-NCSC), Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC), Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NZ), and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Cyber Command Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF)—released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) Russian FSB Cyber Actor Star Blizzard Continues Worldwide Spear-phishing Campaigns. The joint CSA aims to raise awareness of the specific tactics, techniques, and delivery methods used by this Russia-based threat actor group to target individuals and organizations. Known Star Blizzard techniques include:

• Impersonating known contacts' email accounts,
• Creating fake social media profiles,
• Using webmail addresses from providers such as Outlook, Gmail and others, and
• Creating malicious domains that resemble legitimate organizations.

CISA encourages network defenders and critical infrastructure organizations review the CSA to improve their cybersecurity posture and protect against similar exploitation based on threat actor activity. CISA also urges software manufacturers to incorporate secure-by-design and -default principles into their software development practices, limiting the impact of threat actor activity.

For more guidance to protect against the most common and impactful threats, visit CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals. For more information on secure by design, see CISA’s Secure by Design webpage.