Turla Crutch attacks Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an EU country, misuses Dropbox in cyber-espionage
ESET researchers discovered a previously undocumented backdoor and document stealer used for cyber-espionage. ESET has been able to attribute the program, dubbed Crutch by its developers, to the infamous Turla APT group. It was in use from 2015 until at least early 2020. ESET has seen Crutch on the network of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a country of the European Union, suggesting that this malware family is only used against very specific targets. These tools were designed to exfiltrate sensitive documents and other files to Dropbox accounts controlled by Turla operators.
“The main malicious activity is exfiltration of documents and other sensitive files. The sophistication of the attacks and technical details of the discovery further strengthen the perception that the Turla group has considerable resources to operate such a large and diverse arsenal,” says Matthieu Faou, an ESET researcher who investigates the Turla APT group. “Furthermore, Crutch is able to bypass some security layers by abusing legitimate infrastructure – here, Dropbox – in order to blend into normal network traffic while exfiltrating stolen documents and receiving commands from its operators.”