{"id":216739,"date":"2026-02-23T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/23\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using-webhook-based-macro-malware\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T00:00:10","slug":"apt28-targeted-european-entities-using-webhook-based-macro-malware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/23\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using-webhook-based-macro-malware\/","title":{"rendered":"APT28 Targeted European Entities Using Webhook-Based Macro Malware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/02\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using.html\">APT28 Targeted European Entities Using Webhook-Based Macro Malware<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/02\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using.html\">https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/02\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-23 14:41:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"thehackernews.com\">thehackernews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"p-author\">\ue804<span class=\"author\">Ravie Lakshmanan<\/span>\ue802<span class=\"author\">Feb 23, 2026<\/span><\/span><span class=\"p-tags\">Malware \/ Threat Intelligence<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor tracked as APT28 has been attributed to a new campaign targeting specific entities in Western and Central Europe.<\/p>\n<p>The activity, per S2 Grupo&#8217;s LAB52 threat intelligence team, was active between September 2025 and January 2026. It has been codenamed <strong>Operation MacroMaze<\/strong>. &#8220;The campaign relies on basic tooling and the exploitation of legitimate services for infrastructure and data exfiltration,&#8221; the cybersecurity company said.<\/p>\n<p>The attack chains employ spear-phishing emails as a starting point to distribute lure documents that contain a common structural element within their XML, a field named &#8220;INCLUDEPICTURE&#8221; that points to a webhook[.]site URL that hosts a JPG image. This, in turn, causes the image file to be fetched from the remote server when the document is opened.<\/p>\n<p>Put differently, this mechanism acts as a beaconing mechanism akin to a tracking pixel that triggers an outbound HTTP request to the webhook[.]site URL upon opening the document. The server operator can log metadata associated with the request, confirming that the document was indeed opened by the recipient.<\/p>\n<p>LAB52 said it identified multiple documents with slightly tweaked macros between late September 2025 and January 2026, all of which function as a dropper to establish a foothold on the compromised host and deliver additional payloads.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While the core logic of all the macros detected remains consistent, the scripts show an evolution in evasion techniques, ranging from &#8216;headless&#8217; browser execution in the older version to the use of keyboard simulation (SendKeys) in the newer versions to potentially bypass security prompts,&#8221; the Spanish cybersecurity company explained.<\/p>\n<p>The macro is designed to execute a Visual Basic Script (VBScript) to move the infection to the next stage. The script, for its part, runs a CMD file to establish persistence via scheduled tasks and launch a batch script for&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/02\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>APT28 Targeted European Entities Using Webhook-Based Macro Malware https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/02\/apt28-targeted-european-entities-using.html Publish Date: 2026-02-23 14:41:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjSwbKDzax_Hh_RHSU7qEInhqGvzoEncnUbB3WgxiRorJPzrvWGo2GCCC0_94YDAdaIs3gBMgO8N4iM4FoMzMiaM1icI-NX2qTf5Dflmv25XR66ni1JEcMl0HxwApTpA5W48R9KLgF5oo7uB8FAjoUrI3h7FxPgoER_FCPPgJ2gHZQyk3BR4kZkt-tU6CFG\/s1600\/malware-attack-eu.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24,32,25,34],"class_list":["post-216739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity","tag-malware","tag-phishing","tag-threat-actor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216741,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216739\/revisions\/216741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}