The YoroTrooper espionage group likely consists of individuals from Kazakhstan, Cisco’s Talos security researchers report.
Active since at least June 2022 and initially detailed in March this year,
YoroTrooper has been observed targeting government entities in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.
According to Cisco’s
latest report on the advanced persistent threat (APT) actor, the operations appear to be conducted by individuals from Kazakhstan, based on the use of Kazakh currency and of Kazakh, Russian and Uzbek languages.
The threat actor has only targeted one institution in Kazakhstan, namely the government’s Anti-Corruption Agency, it appears to be interested in defending the website of the Kazakhstani state-owned email service, and uses cryptocurrency to purchase infrastructure supporting its operations.
According to Cisco, YoroTrooper “regularly checks for currency conversion rates between Kazakhstani Tenge (KZT), Kazakhstan’s official currency and Bitcoin (BTC) on Google” and has been seen using an online exchange to convert money from Kazakhstani Tenge to Bitcoin.
