Russian APT28 Targets Ukraine Using Signal to Deliver New Malware Families

The Russian state-sponsored threat group APT28, also known as UAC-0001, has been linked to a fresh wave of cyberattacks against Ukrainian government targets, using Signal messenger chats to distribute two previously undocumented malware strains—BeardShell and SlimAgent. 

While the Signal platform itself remains uncompromised, its rising adoption among government personnel has made it a popular delivery vector for phishing attacks. Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) initially discovered these attacks in March 2024, though critical infection vector details only surfaced after ESET notified the agency in May 2025 of unauthorised access to a “gov.ua” email account. 

Investigations revealed that APT28 used Signal to send a macro-laced Microsoft Word document titled “Акт.doc.” Once opened, it initiates a macro that drops two payloads—a malicious DLL file (“ctec.dll”) and a disguised PNG file (“windows.png”)—while modifying the Windows Registry to enable persistence via COM-hijacking. 

These payloads execute a memory-resident malware framework named Covenant, which subsequently deploys BeardShell.
BeardShell, written in C++, is capable of downloading and executing encrypted PowerShell scripts, with execution results exfiltrated via the Icedrive API. The malware maintains stealth by encrypting communications using the ChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithm. 

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