Pro-Ukrainian actors should be cautious of downloading DDoS tools to attack Russia, according to security experts, because they could be booby-trapped with data-stealing malware. 

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister, called for a volunteer "IT army" of hackers to DDoS Russian targets in late February. Cisco Talos, on the other hand, claims that opportunistic cyber-criminals are attempting to take advantage of the subsequent outpouring of support for the Eastern European country. It specifically detected Telegram posts offering DDoS tools that were actually malware-loaded. An organisation calling itself "disBalancer" offers one such tool, named "Liberator,". Although authentic, has been spoofed by others, according to Cisco. 

It explained, “The file offered on the Telegram page ended up being malware, specifically an infostealer designed to compromise unwitting users. The malware, in this case, dumps a variety of credentials and a large amount of cryptocurrency-related information, including wallets and metamask information, which is commonly associated with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).” 

Since none of the malicious spoofs is digitally signed, there is no way to distinguish them apart from the real DDoS tool, according to the vendor. Because the perpetrators of this harmful behaviour have been disseminating infostealers since November, Cisco concluded that it is not the work of fresh people, but rather those aiming to profit from the Ukraine conflict. 

However, Cisco warned that if Russia is subjected to a continuous DDoS attack, such techniques could proliferate. 

It concluded, “In this case, we found some cyber-criminals distributing an infostealer, but it could have just as easily been a more sophisticated state-sponsored actor or privateer group doing work on behalf of a nation-state. We remind users to be wary of installing software whose origins are unknown, especially software that is being dropped into random chat rooms on the internet.” 

The discovery comes as the Russian government revealed this week that hackers targeted an externally loaded widget used to collect visitor statistics and caused temporary disruptions on numerous agency websites. 

Pro-Ukrainian hacktivists have also been seen searching for and deleting Russian cloud databases, according to security researchers.