After having tracked Turla’s activities for several years, we now have a unique understanding of their Tools, Tactics and Procedures (TTPs). In this talk, we would like to share this knowledge to help defenders protect their networks.

Turla is an espionage group known for targeting governments, diplomats and militaries all around the world. One of their first documented campaign was against the US military ten years ago and they are still very active. During this presentation, we will discuss some recent public cases involving Turla operators. This threat actor targets very specific group of people and, as such, use advanced targeting techniques such as spear phishing and watering hole to go after them.

We will present an in-depth analysis of currently undocumented components, such as a highly resilient Outlook backdoor, allegedly used in the early-2018 attack against the German government. We will also provide an overview of the different changes in their TTPs that occurred in the past few months.