Kaspersky links spyware attack to Hacking Team successor

Kaspersky researchers revealed Monday that they uncovered a cyber-espionage campaign tied to Memento Labs, the rebranded successor of Italy's notorious surveillance tech firm Hacking Team, reports CyberScoop.

Dubbed Operation ForumTroll, the campaign targeted Russian government agencies, universities, research centers, media outlets, and financial institutions, aiming to steal sensitive data. Kaspersky traced the operation back to 2022, noting that it exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Google Chrome, later patched by Google, to infect victims through personalized phishing emails disguised as invitations to the Primakov Readings summit.

The firm also discovered Dante, a new commercial spyware tool developed by Memento Labs that shares technical traits with ForumTroll, though the two were not directly linked in all cases. Researchers said victims became infected simply by visiting a malicious website on a Chromium-based browser. The discovery highlights Memento Labs' resurgence in the spyware market and marks the second recent case involving Russian targets and commercial surveillance tools.