T1572: Protocol Tunneling

FIN13 is a financially motivated cyber threat group that has targeted the financial, retail, and hospitality industries in Mexico and Latin America, as early as 2016. FIN13 achieves its objectives by stealing intellectual property, financial data, mergers and acquisition information, or PII.[1][2]

Magic Hound is an Iranian-sponsored threat group that conducts long term, resource-intensive cyber espionage operations, likely on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They have targeted European, U.S., and Middle Eastern government and military personnel, academics, journalists, and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), via complex social engineering campaigns since at least 2014.[1][2][3][4][5]

FIN6 is a cyber crime group that has stolen payment card data and sold it for profit on underground marketplaces. This group has aggressively targeted and compromised point of sale (PoS) systems in the hospitality and retail sectors.[1][2]

Salt Typhoon is a People's Republic of China (PRC) state-backed actor that has been active since at least 2019 and responsible for numerous compromises of network infrastructure at major U.S. telecommunication and internet service providers (ISP).[1][2]

FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been active since 2013. FIN7 has targeted the retail, restaurant, hospitality, software, consulting, financial services, medical equipment, cloud services, media, food and beverage, transportation, pharmaceutical, and utilities industries in the United States. A portion of FIN7 was operated out of a front company called Combi Security and often used point-of-sale malware for targeting efforts. Since 2020, FIN7 shifted operations to big game hunting (BGH), including use of REvil ransomware and their own Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), Darkside. FIN7 may be linked to the Carbanak Group, but multiple threat groups have been observed using Carbanak, leading these groups to be tracked separately.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Ember Bear is a Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2020, linked to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155).[1] Ember Bear has primarily focused operations against Ukrainian government and telecommunication entities, but has also operated against critical infrastructure entities in Europe and the Americas.[2] Ember Bear conducted the WhisperGate destructive wiper attacks against Ukraine in early 2022.[3][4][1] There is some confusion as to whether Ember Bear overlaps with another Russian-linked entity referred to as Saint Bear. At present available evidence strongly suggests these are distinct activities with different behavioral profiles.[2][5]

Chimera is a suspected China-based threat group that has been active since at least 2018 targeting the semiconductor industry in Taiwan as well as data from the airline industry.[1][2]

OilRig is a suspected Iranian threat group that has targeted Middle Eastern and international victims since at least 2014. The group has targeted a variety of sectors, including financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications. It appears the group carries out supply chain attacks, leveraging the trust relationship between organizations to attack their primary targets. The group works on behalf of the Iranian government based on infrastructure details that contain references to Iran, use of Iranian infrastructure, and targeting that aligns with nation-state interests.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Fox Kitten is threat actor with a suspected nexus to the Iranian government that has been active since at least 2017 against entities in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Australia, and North America. Fox Kitten has targeted multiple industrial verticals including oil and gas, technology, government, defense, healthcare, manufacturing, and engineering.[1][2][3][4]

Cobalt Group is a financially motivated threat group that has primarily targeted financial institutions since at least 2016. The group has conducted intrusions to steal money via targeting ATM systems, card processing, payment systems and SWIFT systems. Cobalt Group has mainly targeted banks in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. One of the alleged leaders was arrested in Spain in early 2018, but the group still appears to be active. The group has been known to target organizations in order to use their access to then compromise additional victims.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Reporting indicates there may be links between Cobalt Group and both the malware Carbanak and the group Carbanak.[8]

Cinnamon Tempest is a China-based threat group that has been active since at least 2021 deploying multiple strains of ransomware based on the leaked Babuk source code. Cinnamon Tempest does not operate their ransomware on an affiliate model or purchase access but appears to act independently in all stages of the attack lifecycle. Based on victimology, the short lifespan of each ransomware variant, and use of malware attributed to government-sponsored threat groups, Cinnamon Tempest may be motivated by intellectual property theft or cyberespionage rather than financial gain.[1][2][3][4]

VOID MANTICORE is a threat group assessed to operate on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).[1] Active since at least mid-2022, VOID MANTICORE has targeted government entities, critical infrastructure, and private sector organizations across Albania, Israel, and the United States.[1][2] VOID MANTICORE conducts destructive cyber operations, combining wiper attacks with hack-and-leak campaigns. The group has operated under multiple public-facing personas, including HomeLand Justice in operations against Albania, Karma and Karma Below in campaigns targeting Israeli organizations, and Handala Hack, its current primary persona, which has claimed activity against Israeli and U.S. entities, including a March 2026 attack against Stryker Corporation.[1][3] VOID MANTICORE has been observed collaborating with Scarred Manticore, which has been linked to initial access operations preceding VOID MANTICORE’s activity.[4]

Neo-reGeorg is an open-source web shell designed as a restructuring of reGeorg with improved usability, security, and fixes for exising reGeorg bugs.[1]

Heyoka Backdoor is a custom backdoor--based on the Heyoka open source exfiltration tool--that has been used by Aoqin Dragon since at least 2013.[1][2]

reGeorg is an open-source web shell written in Python that can be used as a proxy to bypass firewall rules and tunnel data in and out of targeted networks.[1][2]

LunarWeb is a backdoor that has been used by Turla since at least 2020 including in a compromise of a European ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) together with LunarLoader and LunarMail. LunarWeb has only been observed deployed against servers and can use Steganography to obfuscate command and control.[1]

Duqu is a malware platform that uses a modular approach to extend functionality after deployment within a target network. [1]

SPAWNCHIMERA is a backdoor that supports command and control and can inject malicious components into native processes.[1][2][3] SPAWNCHIMERA It incorporates capabilities from multiple tools within the SPAWN malware family, including SPAWNANT, SPAWNMOLE, and SPAWNSNAIL.[4][2][3] SPAWNCHIMERA was first reported in April 2024.[2] SPAWNCHIMERA has been observed in activity attributed to People's Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored threat actors, including UNC5221..[4][5][2][6]

FunnyDream is a backdoor with multiple components that was used during the FunnyDream campaign since at least 2019, primarily for execution and exfiltration.[1]

Kevin is a backdoor implant written in C++ that has been used by HEXANE since at least June 2020, including in operations against organizations in Tunisia.[1]

Industroyer is a sophisticated malware framework designed to cause an impact to the working processes of Industrial Control Systems (ICS), specifically components used in electrical substations.[1] Industroyer was used in the attacks on the Ukrainian power grid in December 2016.[2] This is the first publicly known malware specifically designed to target and impact operations in the electric grid.[3]

FRP, which stands for Fast Reverse Proxy, is an openly available tool that is capable of exposing a server located behind a firewall or Network Address Translation (NAT) to the Internet. FRP can support multiple protocols including TCP, UDP, and HTTP(S) and has been abused by threat actors to proxy command and control communications.[1][2][3][4]

Brute Ratel C4 is a commercial red-teaming and adversarial attack simulation tool that first appeared in December 2020. Brute Ratel C4 was specifically designed to avoid detection by endpoint detection and response (EDR) and antivirus (AV) capabilities, and deploys agents called badgers to enable arbitrary command execution for lateral movement, privilege escalation, and persistence. In September 2022, a cracked version of Brute Ratel C4 was leaked in the cybercriminal underground, leading to its use by threat actors.[1][2][3][4][5]

BRICKSTORM is a cross-platform backdoor with variants written in Go and Rust that facilitates command and control, the ingress transfer of other malware, and the exfiltration of data.[1][2][3][4] BRICKSTORM has also been created from a .NET application using ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation to blend in within victim environments.[1] BRICKSTORM was first observed in April 2024.[5] BRICKSTORM has previously been leveraged by People's Republic of China (PRC) state-nexus actors identified as UNC6201, UNC5221, WARP PANDA, PunyToad, and SYLVANITE.[6][7][1][8][9][10][3][4]

C0027 was a financially-motivated campaign linked to Scattered Spider that targeted telecommunications and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies from at least June through December of 2022. During C0027 Scattered Spider used various forms of social engineering, performed SIM swapping, and attempted to leverage access from victim environments to mobile carrier networks.[1]

C0032 was an extended campaign suspected to involve the Triton adversaries with related capabilities and techniques focused on gaining a foothold within IT environments. This campaign occurred in 2019 and was distinctly different from the Triton Safety Instrumented System Attack.[1]

The 2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack was a Sandworm Team campaign that used a combination of GOGETTER, Neo-REGEORG, CaddyWiper, and living of the land (LotL) techniques to gain access to a Ukrainian electric utility to send unauthorized commands from their SCADA system.[1][2]

The SharePoint ToolShell Exploitation campaign was conducted in July 2025 and encompassed the first waves of exploitation against incompletely patched spoofing (CVE-2025-49706) and remote code execution (CVE-2025-49704) vulnerabilities affecting on-premises Microsoft SharePoint servers. Later patched and updated as CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771, the ToolShell vulnerabilities were widely exploited including by China-based ransomware actor Storm-2603 and espionage actors Threat Group-3390 and ZIRCONIUM. SharePoint ToolShell Exploitation targeted multiple regions and industries including finance, education, energy, and healthcare across Asia, Europe, and the United States.[1][2][3][4][5]

Cutting Edge was a campaign conducted by suspected China-nexus espionage actors, variously identified as UNC5221/UTA0178 and UNC5325, that began as early as December 2023 with the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (previously Pulse Secure) VPN appliances. Cutting Edge targeted the U.S. defense industrial base and multiple sectors globally including telecommunications, financial, aerospace, and technology. Cutting Edge featured the use of defense evasion and living-off-the-land (LoTL) techniques along with the deployment of web shells and other custom malware.[1][2][3][4][5]

CostaRicto was a suspected hacker-for-hire cyber espionage campaign that targeted multiple industries worldwide, with a large number being financial institutions. CostaRicto actors targeted organizations in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa, with a large concentration in South Asia (especially India, Bangladesh, and Singapore), using custom malware, open source tools, and a complex network of proxies and SSH tunnels.[1]