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MITRE ATT&CK® Group

G0123: Volatile Cedar

Volatile Cedar is a Lebanese threat group that has targeted individuals, companies, and institutions worldwide. Volatile Cedar has been operating since 2012 and is motivated by political and ideological interests.[1][2]

EnterpriseG0123GroupObject v1.1 Modified
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Glexia's Take

Analyst context for executives and security teams

Analyst confidence Medium

Volatile Cedar is an ATT&CK group entry for a Lebanese threat group, also known as Lebanese Cedar, described as operating since 2012 and targeting individuals, companies, and institutions worldwide for political and ideological interests. The decision value for defenders is not the label alone, but the related behavior: reconnaissance against exposed infrastructure, exploitation of public-facing applications, web shell persistence, and tool transfer. For security leaders, this makes externally exposed web servers and Internet-facing applications a practical priority for resilience, incident readiness, and evidence of control effectiveness.

Executive priority

Treat this as a reminder to validate exposure management and web-server incident readiness. The ATT&CK relationships point to a chain where vulnerability and wordlist scanning may precede exploitation of public-facing applications, followed by web shell persistence and transfer of additional tools. Executives should ask whether Internet-facing systems are inventoried, patched, logged, monitored, and included in incident response playbooks, especially where public applications support business-critical services or compliance obligations.

Technical view

ATT&CK does not provide group-level platforms, tactics, or detection text for Volatile Cedar, but the relationships give useful validation direction. SOC and IR teams should review coverage for T1595.002 Vulnerability Scanning, T1595.003 Wordlist Scanning, T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application, T1505.003 Web Shell, and T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer. Related software includes Explosive, a custom remote access tool on Windows, and Caterpillar WebShell, a self-developed web shell on Windows. Validate telemetry on Internet-facing web applications, web server file systems, application logs, network egress, and file transfer activity rather than assuming group-name-based detection is sufficient.

Likely telemetry

  • Internet-facing asset inventory and external attack surface scan results
  • Web server and reverse proxy access logs showing unusual probing, wordlist paths, or vulnerability-scan patterns
  • Application, web server, and operating system logs for exploitation indicators and abnormal child processes
  • File integrity or endpoint telemetry for new or modified web-accessible scripts and web shell-like files
  • Network telemetry for unexpected outbound connections or file transfers from servers

Detection direction

  • Prioritize behavior-based detection mapped to the related techniques rather than relying on the Volatile Cedar name alone.
  • Tune web reconnaissance analytics to distinguish common Internet scanning noise from repeated, targeted probing of business-critical applications.
  • Validate detections for public-facing application exploitation using web logs, application errors, server process behavior, and post-exploitation activity.
  • Monitor for web shell persistence through unexpected web-accessible files, suspicious script execution, abnormal web server child processes, and unusual command execution from web service accounts.
  • Look for ingress tool transfer through anomalous downloads, uploads, staging directories, or outbound connections from servers that normally should not retrieve tools from the Internet.

Mitigation priorities

  • Maintain an authoritative inventory of Internet-facing applications, web servers, and management interfaces.
  • Use vulnerability management and patch prioritization for exposed applications and services, with risk elevated for systems supporting critical operations.
  • Harden web servers and applications, remove unnecessary exposed services, and review configurations that could enable public-facing exploitation.
  • Implement logging and monitoring across web, application, host, and network layers with retention sufficient for incident response.
  • Deploy file integrity monitoring or equivalent controls for web roots and application directories where feasible.
Analyst notes and limits

The supplied ATT&CK object is a group profile with sparse native fields: no official detection, no group-level platforms, and no tactics listed. The most useful defensive context comes from relationships to two software entries and five techniques. Glexia’s interpretation is therefore framed around those related behaviors, especially exposed application risk, web shell persistence, and tool transfer.

This take does not assert current activity, victim exposure, specific vulnerabilities, or guaranteed detection. Local applicability depends on whether the organization operates exposed web applications, Windows web servers, Linux/macOS/network-device web services, cloud/IaaS workloads, or other platforms reflected in the related techniques. Confirmation requires local asset, vulnerability, logging, and incident evidence.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Volatile Cedar

Volatile Cedar is a Lebanese threat group that has targeted individuals, companies, and institutions worldwide. Volatile Cedar has been operating since 2012 and is motivated by political and ideological interests.[1][2]

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

How security teams should use this page

Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.

ATT&CK relationship table

Techniques used

This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.

5 rows
Domain ID Name Relationship / procedure
Enterprise T1595.002 Vulnerability Scanning Sub-technique

Volatile Cedar has performed vulnerability scans of the target server.CitationCheckPoint Volatile Cedar March 2015CitationClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021
Enterprise T1595.003 Wordlist Scanning Sub-technique

Volatile Cedar has used DirBuster and GoBuster to brute force web directories and DNS subdomains.CitationClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021
Enterprise T1505.003 Web Shell Sub-technique

Volatile Cedar can inject web shell code into a server.CitationCheckPoint Volatile Cedar March 2015CitationClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021
Enterprise T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

Volatile Cedar can deploy additional tools.CitationClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021
Enterprise T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application

Volatile Cedar has targeted publicly facing web servers, with both automatic and manual vulnerability discovery.CitationCheckPoint Volatile Cedar March 2015 CitationClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021
Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

uses · Technique T1595.002: Vulnerability Scanning Enterprise uses · Technique T1595.003: Wordlist Scanning Enterprise uses · Malware S0572: Caterpillar WebShell Enterprise uses · Technique T1505.003: Web Shell Enterprise uses · Malware S0569: Explosive Enterprise uses · Technique T1105: Ingress Tool Transfer Enterprise uses · Technique T1190: Exploit Public-Facing Application Enterprise
Change history

Object version and sync metadata

The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .

ATT&CK release
19.1
Object version
1.1
Created
Modified
Raw hash
5d0003751dabcab9...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
Release Bundle imported Object version Modified Status Raw hash
19.1 1.1 Current bundle 5d0003751dab…
Raw source

Mirrored ATT&CK source object

The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.

Open mirrored raw JSON Open MITRE-hosted copy
Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    CheckPoint Volatile Cedar March 2015

    Threat Intelligence and Research. (2015, March 30). VOLATILE CEDAR. Retrieved February 8, 2021.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    ClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021

    ClearSky Cyber Security. (2021, January). “Lebanese Cedar” APT Global Lebanese Espionage Campaign Leveraging Web Servers. Retrieved February 10, 2021.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    Lebanese Cedar

    (Citation: ClearSky Lebanese Cedar Jan 2021)

  4. [4]
    Volatile Cedar

    (Citation: CheckPoint Volatile Cedar March 2015)

  5. [5]
    mitre-attack G0123
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

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