Threat Actors Database

Crowdstrike Tracks the criminal developer of Nemty ransomware as TRAVELING SPIDER. The actor has been observed to take advantage of single-factor authentication to gain access to victim organizations through Citrix Gateway and send extortion-related emails using the victim’s own Microsoft Office 365 instance.

In April 2020, Crowstrike Falcon OverWatch discovered Iran-based adversary TRACER KITTEN conducting malicious interactive activity against multiple hosts at a telecommunications company in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. The actor was found operating under valid user accounts, using custom backdoors in combination with SSH tunnels for C2. The adversary leveraged their foothold to conduct a variety of reconnaissance activities, undertake credential harvesting and prepare for data exfiltration.

Reporting regarding activity related to the SolarWinds supply chain injection has grown quickly since initial disclosure on 13 December 2020. A significant amount of press reporting has focused on the identification of the actor(s) involved, victim organizations, possible campaign timeline, and potential impact. The US Government and cyber community have also provided detailed information on how the campaign was likely conducted and some of the malware used. MITRE’s ATT&CK team — with the assistance of contributors — has been mapping techniques used by the actor group, referred to as UNC2452/Dark Halo by FireEye and Volexity respectively, as well as SUNBURST and TEARDROP malware.

Researchers at FireEye report finding a hacking group (dubbed NOTROBIN) that has been bundling mitigation code for NetScaler servers with its exploits. In effect, the hackers exploit the flaw to get access to the server, kill any existing malware, set up their own backdoor, then block off the vulnerable code from future exploit attempts by mitigation.

Storm-1295 is a threat actor group that operates the Greatness phishing-as-a-service platform. They utilize synchronous relay servers to present targets with a replica of a sign-in page, resembling traditional phishing attacks. Their adversary-in-the-middle capability allows Storm-1295 to offer their services to other attackers. Active since mid-2022, Storm-1295 is tracked by Microsoft and is known for their involvement in the Greatness PhaaS platform.

Storm-1044 has been identified as part of a cyber campaign in collaboration with Twisted Spider. They employ a strategic approach, targeting specific endpoints using an initial access trojan called DanaBot. Once they gain access, Storm-1044 initiates lateral movement through Remote Desktop Protocol sign-in attempts, passing control to Twisted Spider. Twisted Spider then compromises the endpoints by introducing the CACTUS ransomware. Microsoft has detected ongoing malvertising attacks involving Storm-1044, leading to the deployment of CACTUS ransomware.

With its emergence in 2022, Water Curupira has established itself as a persistent threat actor targeting organizations primarily in South America and Europe. Their modus operandi involves a combination of social engineering tactics and a diversified malware arsenal, including ransomware variants like Black Basta and credential stealers like Cobalt Strike. This multifaceted approach enables them to gain unauthorized access to victim systems, steal sensitive data, and ultimately extort victims through ransomware demands. It has been actively using Pikabot, a loader malware with similarities to Qakbot, in spam campaigns throughout 2023.

ShaggyPanther is a threat actor that primarily targets government entities in Taiwan and Malaysia. They have been active since 2008 and utilize hidden encrypted payloads in registry keys. Their activities have been detected in various locations, including Indonesia and Syria.

In July 2018, an attack on Singapore’s largest public health organization, SingHealth, resulted in a reported 1.5 million patient records being stolen. Until now, nothing was known about who was responsible for this attack. Symantec researchers have discovered that this attack group, which we call Whitefly, has been operating since at least 2017, has targeted organizations based mostly in Singapore across a wide variety of sectors, and is primarily interested in stealing large amounts of sensitive information.

Proofpoint researchers detected campaigns from a relatively new actor, tracked internally as TA2101, targeting German companies and organizations to deliver and install backdoor malware. The actor initiated their campaigns impersonating the Bundeszentralamt fur Steuern, the German Federal Ministry of Finance, with lookalike domains, verbiage, and stolen branding in the emails. For their campaigns in Germany, the actor chose Cobalt Strike, a commercially licensed software tool that is generally used for penetration testing and emulates the type of backdoor framework used by Metasploit, a similar penetration testing tool. Proofpoint researchers have also observed this actor distributing Maze ransomware, employing similar social engineering techniques to those it uses for Cobalt Strike, while also targeting organizations in Italy and impersonating the Agenzia Delle Entrate, the Italian Revenue Agency. We have also recently observed the actor targeting organizations in the United States using the IcedID banking Trojan while impersonating the United States Postal Service (USPS).

In June 2019, CrowdStrike Intelligence observed a source code fork of BitPaymer and began tracking the new ransomware strain as DoppelPaymer. Further technical analysis revealed an increasing divergence between two versions of Dridex, with the new version dubbed DoppelDridex. Based on this evidence, CrowdStrike Intelligence assessed with high confidence that a new group split off from INDRIK SPIDER to form the adversary DOPPEL SPIDER. Following DOPPEL SPIDER’s inception, CrowdStrike Intelligence observed multiple BGH incidents attributed to the group, with the largest known ransomware demand being 250 BTC. Other demands were not nearly as high, suggesting that the group conducts network reconnaissance to determine the value of the victim organization.

Cyber Toufan is a threat actor group that has gained prominence for its cyberattacks targeting Israeli organizations. The group's tactics suggest potential nation-state backing, possibly from Iran. They have been involved in hack-and-leak operations, data breaches, and data destruction, impacting over 100 organizations. Cyber Toufan's activities align with geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and their attacks are characterized by a combination of technical breaches and psychological warfare.

This threat actor uses spear-phishing techniques to target parliaments, government ministries, academics, and media organizations, primarily in the Middle East, for the purpose of espionage. Based on our findings, we believe the attackers represent a previously unknown geopolitically motivated threat actor. The campaign started in 2017, with the attackers doing just enough to achieve their goals. They most likely have access to additional tools when needed and appear to have access to an elaborate database of contacts in sensitive organizations and personnel worldwide, especially of vulnerable and non-trained staff. The victim systems range from personal desktop or laptop systems to large servers with domain controller roles or similar. The nature of the targeted ministries varied, including those responsible for telecommunications, health, energy, justice, finance and so on. Operation Parliament appears to be another symptom of escalating tensions in the Middle East region. The attackers have taken great care to stay under the radar, imitating another attack group in the region. They have been particularly careful to verify victim devices before proceeding with the infection, safeguarding their command and control servers. The targeting seems to have slowed down since the beginning of 2018, probably winding down when the desired data or access was obtained. The targeting of specific victims is unlike previously seen behavior in regional campaigns by Gaza Cybergang or Desert Falcons and points to an elaborate information-gathering exercise that was carried out before the attacks (physical and/or digital). With deception and false flags increasingly being employed by threat actors, attribution is a hard and complicated task that requires solid evidence, especially in complex regions such as the Middle East.

In early Febuary, 2021 TeamTNT launched a new campaign against Docker and Kubernetes environments. Using a collection of container images that are hosted in Docker Hub, the attackers are targeting misconfigured docker daemons, Kubeflow dashboards, and Weave Scope, exploiting these environments in order to steal cloud credentials, open backdoors, mine cryptocurrency, and launch a worm that is looking for the next victim. They're linked to the First Crypto-Mining Worm to Steal AWS Credentials and Hildegard Cryptojacking malware. TeamTNT is a relatively recent addition to a growing number of threats targeting the cloud. While they employ some of the same tactics as similar groups, TeamTNT stands out with their social media presence and penchant for self-promotion. Tweets from the TeamTNT’s account are in both English and German although it is unknown if they are located in Germany.

BITWISE SPIDER has recently and quickly become a significant player in the big game hunting (BGH) landscape. Their dedicated leak site (DLS) has received the highest number of victims posted each month since July 2021 compared to other adversary DLSs due to the growing popularity and effectiveness of LockBit 2.0.

LofyGang has been found to be linked to more than 200 malicious packages, with thousands of installations throughout 2022. The group, believed to have been operating for more than a year, has multiple hacking objectives, including stealing credit card information and stealing user accounts including Discord Inc. premium accounts, streaming services accounts such as Disney+ and Minecraft accounts.

ESET researchers have discovered a new undocumented modular backdoor, SideWalk, being used by an APT group they’ve named SparklingGoblin; this backdoor was used during one of SparklingGoblin’s recent campaigns that targeted a computer retail company based in the USA. This backdoor shares multiple similarities with another backdoor used by the group: CROSSWALK.

FIN8 is a financially motivated group targeting the retail, hospitality and entertainment industries. The actor had previously conducted several tailored spearphishing campaigns using the downloader PUNCHBUGGY and POS malware PUNCHTRACK.

The group’s existence came to light during Context’s investigation of a number of attacks against multinational enterprises that compromise smaller engineering services and consultancies working in their supply chains.