Many profitable phishing assaults end in a monetary loss or malware an infection. However falling for some phishing scams, like these presently concentrating on Russians looking out on-line for organizations which are combating the Kremlin warfare machine, can value you your freedom or your life.
The actual web site of the Ukrainian paramilitary group “Freedom of Russia” legion. The textual content has been machine-translated from Russian.
Researchers on the safety agency Silent Push mapped a community of a number of dozen phishing domains that spoof the recruitment web sites of Ukrainian paramilitary teams, in addition to Ukrainian authorities intelligence websites.
The web site legiohliberty[.]military includes a carbon copy of the homepage for the Freedom of Russia Legion (a.okay.a. “Free Russia Legion”), a three-year-old Ukraine-based paramilitary unit made up of Russian residents who oppose Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
The phony model of that web site copies the respectable website — legionliberty[.]military — offering an interactive Google Kind the place candidates can share their contact and private particulars. The shape asks guests to offer their identify, gender, age, e-mail tackle and/or Telegram deal with, nation, citizenship, expertise within the armed forces; political opinions; motivations for becoming a member of; and any unhealthy habits.
“Participation in such anti-war actions is taken into account unlawful within the Russian Federation, and collaborating residents are commonly charged and arrested,” Silent Push wrote in a report launched at the moment. “All noticed campaigns had comparable traits and shared a standard goal: gathering private data from site-visiting victims. Our staff believes it’s probably that this marketing campaign is the work of both Russian Intelligence Companies or a menace actor with equally aligned motives.”
Silent Push’s Zach Edwards mentioned the pretend Legion Liberty website shared a number of connections with rusvolcorps[.]internet. That area mimics the recruitment web page for a Ukrainian far-right paramilitary group referred to as the Russian Volunteer Corps (rusvolcorps[.]com), and makes use of an identical Google Varieties web page to gather data from would-be members.
Different domains Silent Push related to the phishing scheme embody: ciagov[.]icu, which mirrors the content material on the official web site of the U.S. Central Intelligence Company; and hochuzhitlife[.]com, which spoofs the Ministry of Protection of Ukraine & Common Directorate of Intelligence (whose precise area is hochuzhit[.]com).
In line with Edwards, there are not any indicators that these phishing websites are being marketed through e-mail. Relatively, it seems these accountable are selling them by manipulating the search engine outcomes proven when somebody searches for considered one of these anti-Putin organizations.
In August 2024, safety researcher Artem Tamoian posted on Twitter/X about how he obtained startlingly totally different outcomes when he looked for “Freedom of Russia legion” in Russia’s largest home search engine Yandex versus Google.com. The highest outcome returned by Google was the legion’s precise web site, whereas the primary outcome on Yandex was a phishing web page concentrating on the group.
“I feel at the least a few of them are absolutely promoted through search,” Tamoian mentioned of the phishing domains. “My first thread on that accuses Yandex, however aside from Yandex these web sites are persistently ranked above respectable in DuckDuckGo and Bing. Initially, I didn’t notice the dimensions of it. They preserve showing to this present day.”
The outcomes of a search at DuckDuckGo on Mar. 27, 2025 for “Freedom of Russia legion” reveals the primary outcome returned is a phishing area.
Tamoian, a local Russian who left the nation in 2019, is the founding father of the cyber investigation platform malfors.com. He just lately found two different websites impersonating the Ukrainian paramilitary teams — legionliberty[.]world and rusvolcorps[.]ru — and reported each to Cloudflare. When Cloudflare responded by blocking the websites with a phishing warning, the actual Web tackle of those websites was uncovered as belonging to a identified “bulletproof internet hosting” community referred to as Stark Industries Options Ltd.
Stark Industries Options appeared two weeks earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, materializing out of nowhere with tons of of hundreds of Web addresses in its steady — a lot of them initially assigned to Russian authorities organizations. In Could 2024, KrebsOnSecurity revealed a deep dive on Stark, which has repeatedly been used to host infrastructure for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults, phishing, malware and disinformation campaigns from Russian intelligence companies and pro-Kremlin hacker teams.
In March 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court docket designated the Freedom of Russia legion as a terrorist group, which means that Russians caught speaking with the group may face between 10 and 20 years in jail.
Tamoian mentioned these looking out on-line for details about these paramilitary teams have change into straightforward prey for Russian safety providers.
“I began wanting into these phishing web sites, as a result of I stored stumbling upon information that somebody will get arrested for attempting to affix [the] Ukrainian Military or for attempting to assist them,” Tamoian informed KrebsOnSecurity. “I’ve additionally seen reviews [of] FSB contacting individuals impersonating Ukrainian officers, in addition to utilizing pretend Telegram bots, so I believed pretend web sites may be an possibility as effectively.”
Search outcomes displaying information articles about individuals in Russia being sentenced to prolonged jail phrases for making an attempt to assist Ukrainian paramilitary teams.
Tamoian mentioned reviews floor commonly in Russia about individuals being arrested for attempting perform an motion requested by a “Ukrainian recruiter,” with the courts unfailingly imposing harsh sentences whatever the defendant’s age.
“This retains occurring commonly, however often there are not any particulars about how precisely the particular person will get caught,” he mentioned. “All circumstances associated to state treason [and] terrorism are categorized, so there are barely any particulars.”
Tamoian mentioned whereas he has no direct proof linking any of the reported arrests and convictions to those phishing websites, he’s sure the websites are half of a bigger marketing campaign by the Russian authorities.
“Contemplating that they preserve them alive and preserve spawning extra, I assume it may be an environment friendly factor,” he mentioned. “They’re on high of DuckDuckGo and Yandex, so it sadly works.”
Additional studying: Silent Push report, Russian Intelligence Concentrating on its Residents and Informants.
