Mercenary Akula
Mercenary Akula is the BlueVoyant designation for a Russia-aligned threat cluster attributed to UAC-0050, also known as the DaVinci Group. BlueVoyant observed the cluster conducting a social-engineering campaign against an unnamed European financial institution involved in regional development and reconstruction initiatives. The target was a senior legal and policy advisor involved in procurement, indicating likely intelligence collection and/or financial theft objectives. In the observed operation, the actor used spear-phishing with legal-themed lures and spoofed a Ukrainian judicial domain. The phishing email directed the victim to a PixelDrain-hosted archive, which initiated a multi-stage infection chain: a ZIP containing a RAR archive, which contained a password-protected 7-Zip file, which in turn contained an executable masquerading as a PDF via a double extension (*.pdf.exe). Execution resulted in deployment of an MSI installer for Remote Manipulator System (RMS), a legitimate remote desktop tool. Use of RMS aligns with prior UAC-0050 tradecraft, and the group has also previously used legitimate remote access software such as LiteManager and malware including RemcosRAT in attacks targeting Ukraine. According to CERT-UA, UAC-0050 is a mercenary group associated with Russian law enforcement agencies and operates under the “Fire Cells” branding. CERT-UA has described the group as conducting data gathering, financial theft, and information and psychological operations. BlueVoyant stated that UAC-0050 historically focused primarily on Ukraine-based entities, especially accountants and financial officers, and assessed this incident as a potential expansion toward probing Western European institutions that support Ukraine. Known aliases and related names directly mentioned in the content include UAC-0050, DaVinci Group, and Fire Cells.
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Targeting
Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Who they target
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
- Banks
Where they target
Geographies tied to known operations.
- 🇺🇦 Ukraine
Where they're from
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
- RU
Tradecraft
5 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
Associated malware families
3 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
Recent activity
1 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
The version that knows your environment.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.