Threat Actors Database

BLACKGEAR is an espionage campaign which has targeted users in Taiwan for many years. Multiple papers and talks have been released covering this campaign, which used the ELIRKS backdoor when it was first discovered in 2012. It is known for using blogs and microblogging services to hide the location of its actual command-and-control (C&C) servers. This allows an attacker to change the C&C server used quickly by changing the information in these posts. Like most campaigns, BLACKGEAR has evolved over time. Our research indicates that it has started targeting Japanese users. Two things led us to this conclusion: first, the fake documents that are used as part of its infection routines are now in Japanese. Secondly, it is now using blogging sites and microblogging services based in Japan for its C&C activity.

Returned Libra, also known as 8220 Mining Group, is a cloud threat actor group that has been active since at least 2017. Tools commonly employed during their operations are PwnRig or DBUsed which are customized variants of the XMRig Monero mining software. The Returned Libra mining group is believed to have originated from a GitHub fork of the Rocke group's software. Returned Libra has elevated its mining operations with the use of cloud service platform credential scrapping.

TA578, a threat actor that Proofpoint researchers have been tracking since May of 2020. TA578 has previously been observed in email-based campaigns delivering Ursnif, IcedID, KPOT Stealer, Buer Loader, BazaLoader, and Cobalt Strike.

Threat actor Common Raven has been actively targeting financial sector institutions, compromising their SWIFT payment infrastructure to send out fraudulent payments.

Targets Saudi Arabia, Israel, US, Iran, high ranking defense officials, embassies of various target countries, notable Iran researchers, human rights activists, media and journalists, academic institutions and various scholars, including scientists in the fields of physics and nuclear sciences.

A threat actor which is ac tive since at least November 2014. This group launched long-term at tacks against organizations in the Syrian region using Android and Windows malwares. Its objective is the theft of sensitive information.

In 2014, researchers at Kaspersky Lab discovered and reported on three zero-days that were being used in cyberattacks in the wild. Two of these zero-day vulnerabilities are associated with an advanced threat actor we call Animal Farm. Over the past few years, Animal Farm has targeted a wide range of global organizations. The group has been active since at least 2009 and there are signs that earlier malware versions were developed as far back as 2007.

FIN is a group targeting financial assets including assets able to do financial transaction including PoS.

SentinelLabs has uncovered a cluster of activity beginning at least as far back as 2013 and continuing to the present day, primarily targeting organizations in Southeast Asia and Australia. They assess that the threat actor's primary focus is espionage and relates to targets in Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam. We track this activity as 'Aoqin Dragon'. The threat actor has a history of using document lures with pornographic themes to infect users and makes heavy use of USB shortcut techniques to spread the malware and infect additional targets. Attacks attributable to Aoqin Dragon typically drop one of two backdoors, Mongall and a modified version of the open source Heyoka project.

Threat group that has targeted Japanese organizations with phishing emails. Due to overlapping TTPs, including similar custom tools, DragonOK is thought to have a direct or indirect relationship with the threat group Moafee. 2223 It is known to use a variety of malware, including Sysget/HelloBridge, PlugX, PoisonIvy, FormerFirstRat, NFlog, and NewCT.

Symantec telemetry identified Cadelle and Chafer activity dating from as far back as July 2014, however, it’s likely that activity began well before this date. Command-and-control (C&C) registrant information points to activity possibly as early as 2011, while executable compilation times suggest early 2012. Their attacks continue to the present day. Symantec estimates that each team is made up of between 5 and 10 people.

The PassCV group continues to be one of the most successful and active threat groups that leverage a wide array of stolen Authenticode-signing certificates. Snorre Fagerland of Blue Coat Systems first coined the term PassCV in a blog post. His post provides a good introduction to the group and covers some of the older infrastructure, stolen code-signing certificate reuse, and other connections associated with the PassCV malware. There are several clues alluding to the possibility that multiple groups may be utilizing the same stolen signing certificates, but at this time SPEAR believes the current attacks are more likely being perpetrated by a single group employing multiple publicly available Remote Administration Tools (RATs). The PassCV group has been operating with continued success and has already started to expand their malware repertoire into different off-the-shelf RATs and custom code. SPEAR identified eighteen previously undisclosed stolen Authenticode certificates. These certificates were originally issued to companies and individuals scattered across China, Taiwan, Korea, Europe, the United States and Russia. In this post we expand the usage of the term ‘PassCV’ to encompass the malware mentioned in the Blue Coat Systems report, as well as the APT group behind the larger C2 infrastructure and stolen Authenticode certificates. We’d like to share some of our findings as they pertain to the stolen certificates, command and control infrastructure, and some of the newer custom RATs they’ve begun development on.

Greenbug was discovered targeting a range of organizations in the Middle East including companies in the aviation, energy, government, investment, and education sectors.

These attackers were the subject of an extensive report by Symantec in 2011, which termed the attackers Nitro and stated: 'The goal of the attackers appears to be to collect intellectual property such as design documents, formulas, and manufacturing processes. In addition, the same attackers appear to have a lengthy operation history including attacks on other industries and organizations. Attacks on the chemical industry are merely their latest attack wave. As part of our investigations, we were also able to identify and contact one of the attackers to try and gain insights into the motivations behind these attacks.' Palo Alto Networks reported on continued activity by the attackers in 2014.

GOLD PRELUDE is a financially motivated cybercriminal threat group that operates the SocGholish (aka FAKEUPDATES) malware distribution network. GOLD PRELUDE operates a large global network of compromised websites, frequently running vulnerable content management systems (CMS), that redirect into a malicious traffic distribution system (TDS). The TDS, which researchers at Avast have named Parrot TDS, uses opaque criteria to select victims to serve a fake browser update page. These pages, which are customized to the specific visiting browser software, download the JavaScript-based SocGholish payload frequently embedded within a compressed archive.

Sowbug has been conducting highly targeted cyber attacks against organizations in South America and Southeast Asia and appears to be heavily focused on foreign policy institutions and diplomatic targets. Sowbug has been seen mounting classic espionage attacks by stealing documents from the organizations it infiltrates.

Evasive Panda is an APT group that has been active since at least 2012, conducting cyberespionage targeting individuals, government institutions and organizations.

This threat actor targets organizations in the satellite communications, telecommunications, geospatial-imaging, and defense sectors in the United States and Southeast Asia for espionage purposes.

For the first time, the activity of the Calypso group was detected by specialists of PT Expert Security Center in March 2019, during the work to detect cyber threats. As a result, many malware samples of this group were obtained, affected organizations and control servers of intruders were identified. According to our data, the group has been active since at least September 2016. The main goal of the group is to steal confidential data, the main victims are government agencies from Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, Russia, Thailand, Turkey. Our data suggest that the group has Asian roots. Description translated from Russian.