Introduction In the latter half of 2024, the Russian IT industry, alongside a number of entities in other countries, experienced a notable cyberattack. The attackers employed a range of malicious techniques to trick security systems and remain undetected. To bypass detection, they delivered information about their payload via profiles on both Russian and international social media platforms, as well as other popular sites supporting user-generated content. The samples we analyzed communicated with GitHub, Microsoft Learn Challenge, Quora, and Russian-language social networks. The attackers thus aimed to conceal their activities and establish a complex execution chain for the long-known and widely used Cobalt Strike Beacon. Although the campaign was most active during November and December…