A new CrowdStrike report has found that a Russian group called Fancy Bear likely used a malware implant on Android platforms to monitor Ukraine’s artillery units and launch cyber attacks against the Democratic National Committee, Reuters reported Thursday.
CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch said the hacking group used a variant of the malware that targeted DNC to track Ukrainian artillery units from 2014 to 2016, Dustin Volz reported.
The malware worked to recover communications and locational data from infected devices to gather intelligence that could have been used to target the artillery, the CrowdStrike report revealed.
The implant used a legitimate Android application created by a Ukrainian artillery officer to accelerate data processing, CrowdStrike said.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Fancy Bear primarily works for Russia’s military intelligence agency and that the group is among Russian hackers that launched cyber attacks intended to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election, Reuters stated.