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UAC-0226, also tracked as SHADOW-EARTH-066, is a Russia-aligned cyber-espionage intrusion set focused on Ukrainian military and government targets. The group is associated with the GIFTEDCROOK malware family and has evolved from earlier, simpler delivery methods into a more mature intrusion chain that exploits CVE-2025-8088 in WinRAR to gain execution and persistence through Windows Startup-folder abuse. The actor has conducted spear-phishing operations using Ukraine-themed lures to deliver crafted archive files that exploit the WinRAR path traversal flaw. In observed campaigns, the exploit chain dropped a shortcut for persistence, staged an obfuscated PowerShell loader, and executed a final payload entirely in memory. The malware used dynamic API resolution, direct NT system calls, and manual mapping techniques to reduce visibility to user-mode security tooling and avoid leaving the final payload on disk. Its primary operational objective is espionage. Updated GIFTEDCROOK variants attributed to this actor steal browser credentials, cookies, session data, and browser decryption material from Firefox and Chromium-based browsers including Chrome, Edge, and Opera. The malware also searches local drives for documents and other potentially sensitive files, stages and encrypts collected data, and exfiltrates it over encrypted web traffic. Reporting also indicates code injection into suspended browser processes to recover protected secrets and bypass newer browser protection mechanisms. The group demonstrates persistence, credential theft, session hijacking, file theft, in-memory execution, process injection, and defense-evasion tradecraft. It has targeted Ukrainian military innovation centers, military and defense-related entities, law enforcement bodies, local government organizations, and broader government institutions. Available reporting characterizes the actor as Russia-aligned and engaged in targeted intelligence collection rather than financially motivated crime or ransomware operations.
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Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
24 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
1 malware family attributed to this actor across reporting.
1 CVE this actor has used in observed campaigns. 1 of them exploited in the wild.
7 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
8 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Conducting a targeted cyber-espionage campaign using spear-phishing and a WinRAR path traversal flaw to deliver the GIFTEDCROOK stealer against Ukrainian military and government entities.
Russia-aligned campaign exploiting WinRAR CVE-2025-8088 against Ukrainian organizations for credential and document theft, evolving from simpler macro-based tradecraft to exploit chains and encrypted C2.
Espionage-focused intrusions against Ukrainian organizations using malicious RAR archives that exploit CVE-2025-8088 to deploy an updated GIFTEDCROOK stealer for credential, cookie, and file theft.
Espionage-focused activity cluster exploiting CVE-2025-8088 against Ukrainian organizations, evolving from macro-based theft using GIFTEDCROOK and Telegram exfiltration to more advanced WinRAR exploit chains, in-memory DLL loading, credential theft, file collection, and encrypted HTTPS exfiltration.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.