Threat Actors Database

UAC-0050 is a threat actor that has been active since 2020, targeting government agencies in Ukraine. They have been distributing the Remcos RAT malware through phishing campaigns, using tactics such as impersonating the Security Service of Ukraine and sending emails with malicious attachments. The group has also been linked to other hacking collectives, such as UAC-0096, and has previously used remote administration tools like Remote Utilities. The motive behind their attacks is likely espionage.

The Rancor group’s attacks use two primary malware families which are naming DDKONG and PLAINTEE. DDKONG is used throughout the campaign and PLAINTEE appears to be new addition to these attackers’ toolkit. Countries Unit 42 has identified as targeted by Rancor with these malware families include, but are not limited to Singapore and Cambodia.

Adversaries abusing ICS (based on Dragos Inc adversary list). ALLANITE accesses business and industrial control (ICS) networks, conducts reconnaissance, and gathers intelligence in United States and United Kingdom electric utility sectors. Dragos assesses with moderate confidence that ALLANITE operators continue to maintain ICS network access to: (1) understand the operational environment necessary to develop disruptive capabilities, (2) have ready access from which to disrupt electric utilities. ALLANITE uses email phishing campaigns and compromised websites called watering holes to steal credentials and gain access to target networks, including collecting and distributing screenshots of industrial control systems. ALLANITE operations limit themselves to information gathering and have not demonstrated any disruptive or damaging capabilities. ALLANITE conducts malware-less operations primarily leveraging legitimate and available tools in the Windows operating system.

Cisco Talos recently discovered a new campaign targeting Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) affecting .gov domains, as well as a private Lebanese airline company. Based on our research, it's clear that this adversary spent time understanding the victims' network infrastructure in order to remain under the radar and act as inconspicuous as possible during their attacks. Based on this actor's infrastructure and TTPs, we haven't been able to connect them with any other campaign or actor that's been observed recently. This particular campaign utilizes two fake, malicious websites containing job postings that are used to compromise targets via malicious Microsoft Office documents with embedded macros. The malware utilized by this actor, which we are calling "DNSpionage," supports HTTP and DNS communication with the attackers. In a separate campaign, the attackers used the same IP to redirect the DNS of legitimate .gov and private company domains. During each DNS compromise, the actor carefully generated Let's Encrypt certificates for the redirected domains. These certificates provide X.509 certificates for TLS free of charge to the user. We don't know at this time if the DNS redirections were successful. In this post, we will break down the attackers' methods and show how they used malicious documents to attempt to trick users into opening malicious websites that are disguised as "help wanted" sites for job seekers. Additionally, we will describe the malicious DNS redirection and the timeline of the events.

Unit 42 researchers have been tracking Subaat, an attacker, since 2017. Recently Subaat drew our attention due to renewed targeted attack activity. Part of monitoring Subaat included realizing the actor was possibly part of a larger crew of individuals responsible for carrying out targeted attacks against worldwide governmental organizations. Technical analysis on some of the attacks as well as attribution links with Pakistan actors have been already depicted by 360 and Tuisec, in which they found interesting connections to a larger group of attackers Unit 42 researchers have been tracking, which we are calling Gorgon Group.

On April 7, 2017, Pytor Levashov — who predominantly used the alias Severa or Peter Severa and whom Falcon Intelligence tracks as ZOMBIE SPIDER — was arrested in an international law enforcement operation led by the FBI. ZOMBIE SPIDER’s specialty was large-scale spam distribution, a fundamental component of cybercrime operations. Levashov was the primary threat actor behind a botnet known as Kelihos and its predecessors, Waledac and Storm. In addition to Levashov’s arrest, there was a technical operation conducted by Falcon Intelligence to seize control of the Kelihos botnet.

Chernovite is a highly capable and sophisticated threat actor group that has developed a modular ICS malware framework called PIPEDREAM. They are known for targeting industrial control systems and operational technology environments, with the ability to disrupt, degrade, and potentially destroy physical processes. Chernovite has demonstrated a deep understanding of ICS protocols and intrusion techniques, making them a significant threat to critical infrastructure sectors.

One of their notable tools is a custom backdoor called SockDetour, which operates filelessly and socketlessly on compromised Windows servers. The group's activities have been linked to the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus and ServiceDesk Plus.

Between November 2018 and May 2019, senior members of Tibetan groups received malicious links in individually tailored WhatsApp text exchanges with operators posing as NGO workers, journalists, and other fake personas. The links led to code designed to exploit web browser vulnerabilities to install spyware on iOS and Android devices, and in some cases to OAuth phishing pages. This campaign was carried out by what appears to be a single operator that we call POISON CARP.

As reported by ZDNet, Chinese cyber-security vendor Qihoo 360 published a report on 2019-11-29 exposing an extensive hacking operation targeting the country of Kazakhstan. Targets included individuals and organizations involving all walks of life, such as government agencies, military personnel, foreign diplomats, researchers, journalists, private companies, the educational sector, religious figures, government dissidents, and foreign diplomats alike. The campaign, Qihoo 360 said, was broad, and appears to have been carried by a threat actor with considerable resources, and one who had the ability to develop their private hacking tools, buy expensive spyware off the surveillance market, and even invest in radio communications interception hardware.

Operation Wocao (我操, “Wǒ cāo”, used as “shit” or “damn”) is the name that Fox-IT uses to describe the hacking activities of a Chinese based hacking group. This report details the profile of a publicly underreported threat actor that Fox-IT has dealt with over the past two years. Fox-IT assesses with high confidence that the actor is a Chinese group and that they are likely working to support the interests of the Chinese government and are tasked with obtaining information for espionage purposes. With medium confidence, Fox-IT assesses that the tools, techniques and procedures are those of the actor referred to as APT20 by industry partners. We have identified victims of this actor in more than 10 countries, in government entities, managed service providers and across a wide variety of industries, including Energy, Health Care and High-Tech.

VIKING SPIDER is the criminal group behind the development and distribution of Ragnar Locker ransomware. While public reporting indicates the group began threatening to leak victim data in February 2020, a DLS was not observed until April 2020. The DLS is hosted on Tor, and similar to other actors, proof of data exfiltration is provided before the stolen data is fully leaked. It was also noted that On Dec. 22, 2020, a new post made to MountLocker ransomware’s Tor-hosted DLS was titled 'Cartel News' and included details of a victim of VIKING SPIDER’s Ragnar Locker

ESET has analyzed the operations of Evilnum, the APT group behind the Evilnum malware previously seen in attacks against financial technology companies. While said malware has been seen in the wild since at least 2018 and documented previously, little has been published about the group behind it and how it operates. The group’s targets remain fintech companies, but its toolset and infrastructure have evolved and now consist of a mix of custom, homemade malware combined with tools purchased from Golden Chickens, a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) provider whose infamous customers include FIN6 and Cobalt Group.

GOLD DUPONT is a financially motivated cybercriminal threat group that specializes in post-intrusion ransomware attacks using 777 (aka Defray777 or RansomExx) malware. Active since November 2018, GOLD DUPONT establishes initial access into victim networks using stolen credentials to remote access services like virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or virtual private networks (VPN). From October 2019 to early 2020 the group used GOLD BLACKBURN's TrickBot malware as an initial access vector (IAV) during some intrusions. Since July 2020, the group has also used GOLD SWATHMORE's IcedID (Bokbot) malware as an IAV in some intrusions.

UNC4841 is a well-resourced threat actor that has utilized a wide range of malware and purpose-built tooling to enable their global espionage operations. They have been observed selectively deploying specific malware families at high priority targets, with SKIPJACK being the most widely deployed. UNC4841 primarily targeted government and technology organizations, but they have also been observed targeting other verticals.

This group started operating during the first quarter of 2022. They published samples of alleged stolen data from companies on their site on Tor. It is unclear if they conducted the attacks themselves, or if they bought leaked databases from third parties.

The Gelsemium group has been active since at least 2014 and was described in the past by a few security companies. Gelsemium’s name comes from one possible translation ESET found while reading a report from VenusTech who dubbed the group 狼毒草 for the first time. It’s the name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Gelsemiaceae, Gelsemium elegans is the species that contains toxic compounds like Gelsemine, Gelsenicine and Gelsevirine, which ESET choses as names for the three components of this malware family.

The campaign, called SmugX, overlaps with previously reported activity by Chinese APT actors RedDelta and Mustang Panda. Although those two correlate to some extent with Camaro Dragon, there is insufficient evidence to link the SmugX campaign to the Camaro Dragon group. The campaign uses new delivery methods to deploy (most notably – HTML Smuggling) a new variant of PlugX, an implant commonly associated with a wide variety of Chinese threat actors. Although the payload itself remains similar to the one found in older PlugX variants, its delivery methods results in low detection rates, which until recently helped the campaign fly under the radar.

BRONZE HIGHLAND has been observed using spearphishing as an initial infection vector to deploy the MgBot remote access trojan against targets in Hong Kong. Third party reporting suggests the threat group also targets India, Malaysia and Taiwan and leverages Cobalt Strike and KsRemote Android Rat. CTU researchers assess with moderate confidence that BRONZE HIGHLAND operates on behalf of China and has a remit covering espionage against domestic human rights and pro-democracy advocates and nations neighbouring China

Storm-1567 is the threat actor behind the Ransomware-as-a-Service Akira. They attacked Swedish organizations in March 2023. This ransomware utilizes the ChaCha encryption algorithm, PowerShell, and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Microsoft's Defender for Endpoint successfully blocked a large-scale hacking campaign carried out by Storm-1567, highlighting the effectiveness of their security solution.