Cyberspy network that attacked 47 government agencies and private institutions in Russia and other former Soviet states has been traced back to the US and UK.

Security researchers at Trend Micro claimed the attackers made use of a control network of 15 domain names and ten active IP addresses, and common servers running the malware attacks were situated in the US and UK.

Researchers added that they were surprised to discover that the cyber attacks, called Lurid, were targets at in government agencies and private institutions in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Vietnam rather than the Western Europe or the US.

The list of victims included government ministries, diplomatic missions, space-related agencies, and private research institutions.

Lurid Downlaoder, aka Enfal, malware was used in the attacks. Victims received an email that encouraged them to open an attached file, which used to be inflicted with malicious code exploiting vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader, MS Office and the like.

It is worth mentioning here that the same malware family had previously been used to target US government and private organizations.