The risk actor behind the GIFTEDCROOK malware has made vital updates to show the bug from a primary browser information stealer to a potent intelligence-gathering software.
“Current campaigns in June 2025 reveal GIFTEDCROOK’s enhanced means to exfiltrate a broad vary of delicate paperwork from the gadgets of focused people, together with doubtlessly proprietary information and browser secrets and techniques,” Arctic Wolf Labs mentioned in a report printed this week.
“This shift in performance, mixed with the content material of its phishing lures, […] suggests a strategic deal with intelligence gathering from Ukrainian governmental and army entities.”
GIFTEDCROOK was first documented by the Laptop Emergency Response Workforce of Ukraine (CERT-UA) in early April 2025 in reference to a marketing campaign concentrating on army entities, regulation enforcement companies, and native self-government our bodies.
The exercise, attributed to a hacking group it tracks as UAC-0226, includes using phishing emails containing macro-laced Microsoft Excel paperwork that act as a conduit to deploy GIFTEDCROOK.
An info stealer at its core, the malware is designed to steal cookies, searching historical past, and authentication information from widespread net browsers equivalent to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.
Arctic Wolf’s evaluation of the artifacts has revealed that the stealer began off as a demo in February 2025, earlier than gaining new options with variations 1.2 and 1.3.
These new iterations embrace the flexibility to reap paperwork and information under 7 MB in dimension, particularly on the lookout for information created or modified inside the final 45 days. The malware particularly searches for the next extensions: .doc, .docx, .rtf, .pptx, .ppt, .csv, .xls, .xlsx, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .pdf, .odt, .ods, .rar, .zip, .eml, .txt, .sqlite, and .ovpn.
The e-mail campaigns leverage military-themed PDF lures to entice customers into clicking on a Mega cloud storage hyperlink that hosts a macro-enabled Excel workbook (“Список оповіщених військовозобов’язаних організації 609528.xlsm”), inflicting GIFTEDCROOK to be downloaded when the recipient activates macros. Many customers do not realize how widespread macro-enabled Excel information are in phishing assaults. They slip previous defenses as a result of folks usually count on spreadsheets in work emails—particularly ones that look official or government-related.
The captured info is bundled right into a ZIP archive and exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled Telegram channel. If the overall archive dimension exceeds 20 MB, it’s damaged down into a number of elements. By sending stolen ZIP archives in small chunks, GIFTEDCROOK avoids detection and skips round conventional community filters. Within the ultimate stage, a batch script is executed to erase traces of the stealer from the compromised host.
This is not nearly stealing passwords or monitoring on-line habits—it is focused cyber espionage. The malware’s new means to sift via latest information and seize paperwork like PDFs, spreadsheets, and even VPN configs factors to a much bigger objective: gathering intelligence. For anybody working in public sector roles or dealing with delicate inner studies, this sort of doc stealer poses an actual danger—not simply to the person, however to the whole community they’re linked to.
“The timing of the campaigns mentioned on this report demonstrates clear alignment with geopolitical occasions, significantly the latest negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul,” Arctic Wolf mentioned.
“The development from easy credential theft in GIFTEDCROOK model 1, to complete doc and information exfiltration in variations 1.2 and 1.3, displays coordinated growth efforts the place malware capabilities adopted geopolitical aims to boost information assortment from compromised programs in Ukraine.”
