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MITRE ATT&CK® Campaign

C0021: C0021

C0021 was a spearphishing campaign conducted in November 2018 that targeted public sector institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), educational institutions, and private-sector corporations in the oil and gas, chemical, and hospitality industries. The majority of targets were located in the US, particularly in and around Washington D.C., with other targets located in Europe, Hong Kong, India, and Canada. C0021's technical artifacts, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and targeting overlap with previous suspected APT29 activity.[1][2]

EnterpriseC0021CampaignObject v1.0Modified
Discuss defensive coverageBack to ATT&CK
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

C0021 matters because it shows how a targeted spearphishing-link campaign can combine social engineering, staged infrastructure, obfuscated payloads, PowerShell, legitimate execution utilities, and Cobalt Strike-style post-exploitation tooling. For leaders, the practical issue is not the 2018 date alone; it is whether the organization can prove that email, identity, endpoint, and network teams would see and contain this chain before it becomes a broader intrusion.

Executive priority

Prioritize this as a resilience and evidence problem: can the business demonstrate controls against targeted phishing links, payload download, command execution, and command-and-control traffic? The campaign targeted public sector, NGOs, education, and several private-sector industries including oil and gas, chemical, and hospitality, so risk owners in similar environments should use it to test phishing readiness, incident response handoffs, and audit evidence for email security, endpoint logging, and network monitoring. Treat the reported overlap with suspected APT29 activity as context, not as a definitive attribution claim.

Technical view

SOC and IR teams should validate visibility across the relationship chain: spearphishing links and user click activity; execution via PowerShell and rundll32; embedded or obfuscated payloads and later deobfuscation/decoding; ingress tool transfer; C2 over web protocols, non-application-layer protocols, and encrypted/asymmetric channels; and use of Cobalt Strike. Because ATT&CK provides no official detection text for this campaign, detection engineering should map controls to the related techniques rather than relying on campaign-level indicators.

Likely telemetry

  • Email security logs for inbound messages, URLs, sender metadata, and user click events
  • Identity provider and Office Suite logs related to link access and authentication context
  • Endpoint process creation telemetry, especially PowerShell and rundll32 command lines
  • Script block, command-line, and file creation telemetry where available
  • Web proxy, DNS, firewall, and network flow logs for outbound web and non-application-layer communications

Detection direction

  • Test whether phishing-link detections preserve enough context to connect email delivery, URL click, payload retrieval, and endpoint execution.
  • Tune PowerShell and rundll32 analytics for suspicious parent-child process chains, unusual command-line structure, and encoded or obfuscated content while accounting for legitimate administrative use.
  • Validate detections for payload staging and tool transfer from external infrastructure, especially where web traffic may appear routine.
  • Look for Cobalt Strike-related behavior through behavioral analytics rather than assuming tool-name signatures are sufficient.
  • Correlate host and network telemetry because web protocols, encrypted communications, and non-application-layer protocols can reduce visibility if monitored in isolation.

Mitigation priorities

  • Strengthen phishing-link defenses first: email filtering, URL inspection, user reporting workflows, and rapid takedown/blocking processes.
  • Harden identity and Office Suite access paths with conditional access, strong authentication, and monitoring of suspicious link-driven sessions where applicable.
  • Constrain and monitor scripting and living-off-the-land execution, especially PowerShell and rundll32 on Windows endpoints.
  • Ensure endpoint controls can inspect downloaded files, embedded payloads, obfuscated content, and decoding activity.
  • Restrict unnecessary outbound traffic and maintain proxy, DNS, firewall, and network telemetry for investigation.
Additional notes and limits

The official campaign description states that C0021 was a November 2018 spearphishing campaign targeting public sector institutions, NGOs, educational institutions, and private-sector corporations in oil and gas, chemical, and hospitality, with most targets in the US and others in Europe, Hong Kong, India, and Canada. It also states technical artifacts, TTPs, and targeting overlapped with previous suspected APT29 activity. This take uses that as contextual intelligence only and focuses on defensive validation against the related ATT&CK techniques and Cobalt Strike relationship.

ATT&CK supplies no official detection text, no campaign-level platforms or tactics, and no local indicators in the provided object. Any statement about current exposure, active exploitation, attribution, or coverage requires environment-specific telemetry and intelligence beyond the supplied fields.

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

C0021

C0021 was a spearphishing campaign conducted in November 2018 that targeted public sector institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), educational institutions, and private-sector corporations in the oil and gas, chemical, and hospitality industries. The majority of targets were located in the US, particularly in and around Washington D.C., with other targets located in Europe, Hong Kong, India, and Canada. C0021's technical artifacts, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and targeting overlap with previous suspected APT29 activity.[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.

15 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1583.001DomainsSub-technique

For C0021, the threat actors registered domains for use in C2.[2]

EnterpriseT1218.011Rundll32Sub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors used `rundll32.exe` to execute the Cobalt Strike Beacon loader DLL.[2]

EnterpriseT1027.010Command ObfuscationSub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors used encoded PowerShell commands.[2][1]

EnterpriseT1584.001DomainsSub-technique

For C0021, the threat actors used legitimate but compromised domains to host malicious payloads.[1]

EnterpriseT1204.001Malicious LinkSub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors lured users into clicking a malicious link which led to the download of a ZIP archive containing a malicious .LNK file.[2]

EnterpriseT1095Non-Application Layer Protocol

During C0021, the threat actors used TCP for some C2 communications.[2]

EnterpriseT1588.002ToolSub-technique

For C0021, the threat actors used Cobalt Strike configured with a modified variation of the publicly available Pandora Malleable C2 Profile.[2][1]

EnterpriseT1071.001Web ProtocolsSub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors used HTTP for some of their C2 communications.[2]

EnterpriseT1608.001Upload MalwareSub-technique

For C0021, the threat actors uploaded malware to websites under their control.[2][1]

EnterpriseT1105Ingress Tool Transfer

During C0021, the threat actors downloaded additional tools and files onto victim machines.[1][2]

EnterpriseT1140Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

During C0021, the threat actors deobfuscated encoded PowerShell commands including use of the specific string `'FromBase'+0x40+'String'`, in place of `FromBase64String` which is normally used to decode base64.[2][1]

EnterpriseT1566.002Spearphishing LinkSub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors sent phishing emails with unique malicious links, likely for tracking victim clicks.[2][1]

EnterpriseT1573.002Asymmetric CryptographySub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors used SSL via TCP port 443 for C2 communications.[2]

EnterpriseT1059.001PowerShellSub-technique

During C0021, the threat actors used obfuscated PowerShell to extract an encoded payload from within an .LNK file.[2][1]

EnterpriseT1027.009Embedded PayloadsSub-technique

For C0021, the threat actors embedded a base64-encoded payload within a LNK file.[1]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

MalwareEnterprise

S0154: Cobalt Strike

Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.[1]

In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz.[1]

LinuxmacOSWindows
Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

uses · TechniqueT1583.001: DomainsEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1218.011: Rundll32Enterpriseuses · TechniqueT1027.010: Command ObfuscationEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1584.001: DomainsEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1204.001: Malicious LinkEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1095: Non-Application Layer ProtocolEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1588.002: ToolEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1071.001: Web ProtocolsEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1608.001: Upload MalwareEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1105: Ingress Tool TransferEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1140: Deobfuscate/Decode Files or InformationEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1566.002: Spearphishing LinkEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0154: Cobalt StrikeEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1573.002: Asymmetric CryptographyEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1059.001: PowerShellEnterpriseuses · TechniqueT1027.009: Embedded PayloadsEnterprise
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
1.0
Created
Modified
Raw hash
11fb25f7b47fa27b...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(1)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.11.0Current bundle11fb25f7b47f…
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 JSONOpen 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.

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