determined that the earliest samples of the MiniDuke malware attributed to the group date from 2008. The original code was written in assembly language. Symantec believes that Cozy Bear had been compromising diplomatic organizations and governments since at least 2010. The CozyDuke malware utilises a backdoor and a dropper. The malware exfiltrates data to a command and control server. Attackers may tailor the malware to the environment. The backdoor components of Cozy Bear's malware are updated over time with modifications to cryptography, trojan functionality, and anti-detection. The speed at which Cozy Bear develops and deploys its components is reminiscent of the toolset of Fancy Bear, which also uses the tools CHOPSTICK and CORESHELL. Cozy Bear's CozyDuke malware toolset is structurally and functionally similar to second stage components used in early Miniduke, Cosmicduke, and OnionDuke operations. A second stage module of the CozyDuke malware, Show.dll, appears to have been built onto the same platform as OnionDuke, suggesting that the authors are working together or are the same people. The campaigns and the malware toolsets they use are referred to as the Dukes, including Cosmicduke, Cozyduke, and Miniduke. CozyDuke is connected to the MiniDuke and CosmicDuke campaigns, as well as to the OnionDuke cyberespionage campaign. Each threat group tracks their targets and use toolsets that were likely created and updated by Russian speakers. Following exposure of the MiniDuke in 2013, updates to the malware were written in C/C++ and it was packed with a new obfuscator. Cozy Bear is suspected of being behind the 'HAMMERTOSS' remote access tool which uses commonly visited websites like Twitter and GitHub to relay command data. Seaduke is a highly configurable, low-profile Trojan only used for a small set of high-value targets. Typically, Seaduke is installed on systems already infected with the much more widely distributed CozyDuke.
Attacks
Cozy Bear appears to have different projects, with different user groups. The focus of its project "Nemesis Gemina" is military, government, energy, diplomatic and telecom sectors. Evidence suggests that Cozy Bear's targets have included commercial entities and government organizations in Germany, Uzbekistan, South Korea and the US, including the US State Department and the White House in 2014.
Office monkeys (2014)
In March 2014, a Washington, D.C.-based private research institute was found to have Cozyduke on their network. Cozy Bear then started an email campaign attempting to lure victims into clicking on a flash video of office monkeys that would also include malicious executables. By July the group had compromised government networks and directed Cozyduke-infected systems to install Miniduke onto a compromised network. In the summer of 2014, digital agents of the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service infiltrated Cozy Bear. They found that these Russian hackers were targeting the US Democratic Party, State Department and White House. Their evidence influenced the FBI's decision to open an investigation.
In August 2015 Cozy Bear was linked to a spear-phishingcyber-attack against the Pentagon email system causing the shut down of the entire Joint Staff unclassified email system and Internet access during the investigation.
In June 2016, Cozy Bear was implicated alongside the hacker group Fancy Bear in the Democratic National Committee cyber attacks. While the two groups were both present in the Democratic National Committee's servers at the same time, they appeared to be unaware of the other, each independently stealing the same passwords and otherwise duplicating their efforts. A CrowdStrike forensic team determined that while Cozy Bear had been on the DNC's network for over a year, Fancy Bear had only been there a few weeks. Cozy Bear's more sophisticated tradecraft and interest in traditional long-term espionage suggest that the group originates from a separate Russian intelligence agency.
After the 2016 United States presidential election, Cozy Bear was linked to a series of coordinated and well-planned spear phishing campaigns against U.S.-based think tanks and non-governmental organizations.
Suspicions that Cozy Bear had ceased operations were dispelled in 2019 by the discovery of three new malware families attributed to Cozy Bear: PolyglotDuke, RegDuke and FatDuke. This shows that Cozy Bear did not cease operations, but rather had developed new tools that were harder to detect. Target compromises using these newly uncovered packages are collectively referred to as Operation Ghost.
In July 2020 Cozy Bear was accused by the NSA, NCSC and the CSE of trying to steal data on vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 being developed in the UK, US, and Canada.
Popular culture
In the Lair of the Cozy Bear is a translation of the Dutch novel In het hol van de Cozy Bear that relates the story of the infiltration of Cozy Bear told from the perspective of an American liaison officer attached to the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service.
