Threat Actors Database

Lookout and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have discovered Dark Caracal, a persistent and prolific actor, who at the time of writing is believed to be administered out of a building belonging to the Lebanese General Security Directorate in Beirut. At present, we have knowledge of hundreds of gigabytes of exfiltrated data, in 21+ countries, across thousands of victims. Stolen data includes enterprise intellectual property and personally identifiable information.

Nexus Zeta is no stranger when it comes to implementing SOAP related exploits. The threat actor has already been observed in implementing two other known SOAP related exploits, CVE-2014–8361 and CVE-2017–17215 in his Satori botnet project. A third SOAP exploit, TR-069 bug has also been observed previously in IoT botnets. This makes EDB 38722 the fourth SOAP related exploit which is discovered in the wild by IoT botnets.

Iron group has developed multiple types of malware (backdoors, crypto-miners, and ransomware) for Windows, Linux and Android platforms. They have used their malware to successfully infect, at least, a few thousand victims.

While analysing an incident which involved a suspected keylogger, we identified a malicious library able to interact with a virtual file system, which is usually the sign of an advanced APT actor. This turned out to be a malicious loader internally named ‘Slingshot’, part of a new, and highly sophisticated attack platform that rivals Project Sauron and Regin in complexity. While for most victims the infection vector for Slingshot remains unknown, we were able to find several cases where the attackers got access to MikroTik routers and placed a component downloaded by Winbox Loader, a management suite for MikroTik routers. In turn, this infected the administrator of the router. We believe this cluster of activity started in at least 2012 and was still active at the time of this analysis (February 2018).

Bignosa is a threat actor known for launching malware campaigns targeting Australian and US organizations using phishing emails with disguised Agent Tesla attachments protected by Cassandra Protector. They compromised servers by installing Plesk and RoundCube, connected via SSH and RDP, and used advanced obfuscation methods to evade detection. Bignosa collaborated with another cybercriminal named Gods, who provided advice and assistance in their malicious activities. The actor has been linked to multiple phishing attacks and malware distribution campaigns, showcasing a high level of sophistication in their operations.

The Smishing Triad is a Chinese-speaking threat group known for targeting postal services and their customers globally through smishing campaigns. They leverage compromised Apple iMessage accounts to send fraudulent messages warning of undeliverable packages, aiming to collect personally identifying information and payment credentials. The group offers smishing kits for sale on platforms like Telegram, enabling other cybercriminals to launch independent attacks. "Smishing Triad" has expanded its operations to target UAE citizens, using geo-filtering to focus on victims in the Emirates.

Adversaries abusing ICS (based on Dragos Inc adversary list). This threat actor targets organizations involved in oil, gas, and electricity production, primarily in the Gulf region, for espionage purposes. According to one cybersecurity company, the threat actor “compromises a target machine and passes it off to another threat actor for further exploitation.”

While it is not clear exactly what the attacker is looking for, what is clear is that once he finds it, a second stage of the attack awaits, fetching additional modules and/or malware from the Command and Control server. This then is a surveillance attack in progress and has been dubbed ‘Big Bang’ due to the attacker’s fondness for the ‘Big Bang Theory’ TV show, after which some of the malware’s modules are named.

Since April 2018, an APT group (Blind Eagle, APT-C-36) suspected coming from South America carried out continuous targeted attacks against Colombian government institutions as well as important corporations in financial sector, petroleum industry, professional manufacturing, etc.

TEMP.Veles is a Russia-based threat group that has targeted critical infrastructure. The group has been observed utilizing TRITON, a malware framework designed to manipulate industrial safety systems.

This threat actor targets Uighurs—a minority ethnic group located primarily in northwestern China—and devices from Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Xiaomi, for espionage purposes.

This threat actor compromises civil society groups the Chinese Communist Party views as hostile to its interests, such as Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese activist. The threat actor also targeted the Myanmar electoral commission.

An extensive surveillance operation targets specific groups of individuals with malicious mobile apps that collect sensitive information on the device along with surrounding voice recordings. Researchers with CheckPoint discovered the attack and named it Domestic Kitten. The targets are Kurdish and Turkish natives, and ISIS supporters, all Iranian citizens.

Treasury has identified a sophisticated cyber-enabled ATM cash out campaign we are calling FASTCash. FASTCash has been active since late 2016 targeting banks in Africa and Asia to remotely compromise payment switch application servers within banks to facilitate fraudulent transactions, primarily involving ATMs, to steal cash equivalent to tens of millions of dollars. FBI has attributed malware used in this campaign to the North Korean government. We expect FASTCash to continue targeting retail payment systems vulnerable to remote exploitation.

ESET research reveals a successor to the infamous BlackEnergy APT group targeting critical infrastructure, quite possibly in preparation for damaging attacks

Malware experts at CSE Cybsec uncovered a massive malvertising campaign dubbed EvilTraffic leveraging tens of thousands compromised websites. Crooks exploited some CMS vulnerabilities to upload and execute arbitrary PHP pages used to generate revenues via advertising.

HookAds is a malvertising campaign that purchases cheap ad space on low quality ad networks commonly used by adult web sites, online games, or blackhat seo sites. These ads will include JavaScript that redirects a visitor through a serious of decoy sites that look like pages filled with native advertisements, online games, or other low quality pages. Under the right circumstances, a visitor will silently load the Fallout exploit kit, which will try and install its malware payload.

This threat actor targets civil society groups and Emirati journalists, activists, and dissidents.

According to CrowdStrike, this actor is using TinyLoader and TinyPOS, potentially buying access through Dridex infections.

GRIM SPIDER is a sophisticated eCrime group that has been operating the Ryuk ransomware since August 2018, targeting large organizations for a high-ransom return. This methodology, known as “big game hunting,” signals a shift in operations for WIZARD SPIDER, a criminal enterprise of which GRIM SPIDER appears to be a cell. The WIZARD SPIDER threat group, known as the Russia-based operator of the TrickBot banking malware, had focused primarily on wire fraud in the past. Similar to Samas and BitPaymer, Ryuk is specifically used to target enterprise environments. Code comparison between versions of Ryuk and Hermes ransomware indicates that Ryuk was derived from the Hermes source code and has been under steady development since its release. Hermes is commodity ransomware that has been observed for sale on forums and used by multiple threat actors. However, Ryuk is only used by GRIM SPIDER and, unlike Hermes, Ryuk has only been used to target enterprise environments. Since Ryuk’s appearance in August, the threat actors operating it have netted over 705.80 BTC across 52 transactions for a total current value of $3,701,893.98 USD. Grim Spider is reportedly associated with Lunar Spider and Wizard Spider.