PhantomCore, a hacking group targeting Russian and Belarusian companies since 2022, launched a new wave of malicious email campaigns on January 19 and 21, 2026. The attacks targeted various sectors including utilities, finance, urban infrastructure, aerospace, consumer digital services, chemical industry, construction, consumer goods manufacturing, and e-commerce. The campaign used phishing emails with malicious attachments, leveraging compromised legitimate email addresses. The malware operates in multiple stages, including downloading decoy documents, executing PowerShell scripts, and establishing persistence through scheduled tasks. The second stage malware, similar to previously known PhantomCore.PollDL, communicates with command and control servers to receive and execute commands.
This analysis examines Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks in South Korea during May 2025. The majority of identified attacks utilized spear phishing as the primary infiltration method. Two main types of attacks were observed: Type A, which uses LNK files to execute malicious scripts and download additional malware, and Type B, which employs LNK files to download and execute obfuscated Python scripts. Both types use deception techniques, including decoy documents and task scheduler manipulation. The attacks targeted various sectors, using topics such as financial reporting, privacy protection, and business registration to lure victims. The report provides detailed information on file names, decoy documents, and indicators of compromise, including MD5 hashes, URLs, FQDNs, and IP addresses associated with the malicious activities.
