Operation ForumTroll continues: Russian political scientists targeted using plagiarism reports


In March 2025, we discovered Operation ForumTroll, a series of sophisticated cyberattacks exploiting the CVE-2025-2783 vulnerability in Google Chrome. Kaspersky researchers previously detailed the malicious implants used in the operation: the LeetAgent backdoor and the complex spyware Dante, developed by Memento Labs (formerly Hacking Team). However, the attackers behind this operation didn’t stop at their spring campaign and have continued to infect targets within the Russian Federation.

In October 2025, just days before we presented our report detailing the ForumTroll APT group’s attack at the Security Analyst Summit, we detected a new targeted phishing campaign by the same group.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Agonizing Serpens (Aka Agrius) Targeting the Israeli Higher Education and Tech Sectors

    November 6, 2023

    Unit 42 researchers have investigated a series of destructive cyberattacks beginning in January 2023 and continuing as recently as October 2023, targeting the education and technology sectors in Israel. The attacks are characterized by attempts to steal sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and intellectual property. Once the attackers stole the information, they ...

  • Online store exposed millions of Chinese citizen IDs

    November 6, 2023

    A security researcher said he discovered millions of Chinese citizen identity numbers spilling online after an e-commerce store left its database exposed to the internet. Viktor Markopoulos, a security researcher working for CloudDefense.ai, said he found the database belonging to Zhefengle, a China-based e-commerce store for importing goods from overseas. The database contained more than ...

  • New Report On Suffolk County Cyber Attack Raises Questions

    November 6, 2023

    The former IT commissioner for the Suffolk County Clerk’s department did not alert county officials that the computer network in the clerk’s office was responding to a “radical malware attack” until eight hours after he was alerted, the Press has learned. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) sent an email at 3 a.m. on Sept. 8, ...

  • US sanctions Russian accused of laundering Ryuk ransomware funds

    November 6, 2023

    The U.S. government has sanctioned a Russian national for allegedly laundering millions of dollars’ worth of victim ransom payments on behalf of individuals linked to the notorious Ryuk ransomware group. According to an announcement from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Ekaterina Zhdanova, 37, is accused of using virtual currency exchange transfers and ...

  • Infosys subsidiary hit by cyber security attack

    November 3, 2023

    Infosys announced on Friday, November 3, that its US unit, Infosys McCamish Systems, was impacted by a cyber security event, resulting in the non-availability of certain applications and systems. The IT services major said it is working with a cyber security company to resolve the issue and that it had launched an investigation to identify the ...

  • Payola ransomware operator demands remote access to PC

    November 3, 2023

    The Sonicwall threat research team have recently been tracking a new ransomware family called Payola. This family of ransomware appeared in late August 2023. It is written in .NET and is easy to analyze as it contains no obfuscation. Early variants would append “.Payola” to the names of encrypted files but the current variants use ...