C0025: 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack

C0025: 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack describes [2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack](https://attack.mitre.org/campaigns/C0025) was a [Sandworm Team](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0034) campaign during which they used [Industroyer](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0604) malware to target and disrupt distribution substations within the Ukrainian power grid. This campaign was the second major public attack conducted against Ukraine by [Sandworm Team](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0034).(Citation: ESET Industroyer)(Citation: Dragos Crashoverride 2018)

Executive priority

C0025: 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack is an official MITRE ATT&CK campaign. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.

Technical view

Security teams should validate C0025: 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.

Likely telemetry

Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata

Detection direction

Validate whether C0025: 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.

Mitigation priorities

Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.

Additional notes and limits

Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.

This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.

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

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack

2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack was a Sandworm Team campaign during which they used Industroyer malware to target and disrupt distribution substations within the Ukrainian power grid. This campaign was the second major public attack conducted against Ukraine by Sandworm Team.[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.

Filter related techniques21 rows

Domain	ID	Name	Relationship / procedure
Enterprise	T1059.005	Visual BasicSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team created VBScripts to run on an SSH server.[2]
Enterprise	T1036.008	Masquerade File TypeSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team masqueraded executables as `.txt` files.[2]
Enterprise	T1059.001	PowerShellSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used PowerShell scripts to run a credential harvesting tool in memory to evade defenses.[2]
Enterprise	T1036.005	Match Legitimate Resource Name or LocationSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, DLLs and EXEs with filenames associated with common electric power sector protocols were used to masquerade files.CitationDragos Crashoverride 2017
Enterprise	T1505.001	SQL Stored ProceduresSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used various MS-SQL stored procedures.[2]
Enterprise	T1136	Create Account	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team added a login to a SQL Server with `sp_addlinkedsrvlogin`.[2]
Enterprise	T1685.001	Disable or Modify Windows Event LogSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team disabled event logging on compromised systems.[2]
Enterprise	T1570	Lateral Tool Transfer	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used `move` to transfer files to a network share.[2]
Enterprise	T1059.003	Windows Command ShellSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used the `xp_cmdshell` command in MS-SQL.[2]
Enterprise	T1027	Obfuscated Files or Information	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used heavily obfuscated code with Industroyer in its Windows Notepad backdoor.[1]
Enterprise	T1543.003	Windows ServiceSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used an arbitrary system service to load at system boot for persistence for Industroyer. They also replaced the ImagePath registry value of a Windows service with a new backdoor binary. CitationDragos Crashoverride 2017
Enterprise	T1027.002	Software PackingSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used UPX to pack a copy of Mimikatz.[2]
Enterprise	T1036.010	Masquerade Account NameSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team created two new accounts, “admin” and “система” (System).[2]
Enterprise	T1003.001	LSASS MemorySub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used Mimikatz to capture and use legitimate credentials.[2]
Enterprise	T1047	Windows Management Instrumentation	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, WMI in scripts were used for remote execution and system surveys. [2]
Enterprise	T1098	Account Manipulation	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used the `sp_addlinkedsrvlogin` command in MS-SQL to create a link between a created account and other servers in the network.[2]
Enterprise	T1110	Brute Force	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used a script to attempt RPC authentication against a number of hosts.[2]
Enterprise	T1136.002	Domain AccountSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team created two new accounts, “admin” and “система” (System). The accounts were then assigned to a domain matching local operation and were delegated new privileges.[2]
Enterprise	T1018	Remote System Discovery	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team checked for connectivity to resources within the network and used LDAP to query Active Directory, discovering information about computers listed in AD.[2]
Enterprise	T1554	Compromise Host Software Binary	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used a trojanized version of Windows Notepad to add a layer of persistence for Industroyer.[1]
Enterprise	T1021.002	SMB/Windows Admin SharesSub-technique	During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team utilized `net use` to connect to network shares.[2]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

G0034: Sandworm Team

Sandworm Team is a destructive threat group that has been attributed to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Main Center for Special Technologies (GTsST) military unit 74455.[1][2] This group has been active since at least 2009.[3][4][5][6]

In October 2020, the US indicted six GRU Unit 74455 officers associated with Sandworm Team for the following cyber operations: the 2015 and 2016 attacks against Ukrainian electrical companies and government organizations, the 2017 worldwide NotPetya attack, targeting of the 2017 French presidential campaign, the 2018 Olympic Destroyer attack against the Winter Olympic Games, the 2018 operation against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and attacks against the country of Georgia in 2018 and 2019.[1][2] Some of these were conducted with the assistance of GRU Unit 26165, which is also referred to as APT28.[7]

S0604: Industroyer

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]

Windows

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

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: 20.0
Object version: 1.0
Created: Mar 31, 2023, 17:22 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Modified: Jul 31, 2026, 21:05 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Raw hash: 215da587721958ec...

Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(3)

Release	Bundle imported	Object version	Modified	Status	Raw hash
20.0	Oct 18, 2026, 20:39 UTC (UTC+00:00)	1.0	Jul 31, 2026, 21:05 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Current bundle	`215da5877219…`
19.2	Aug 6, 2026, 02:58 UTC (UTC+00:00)	1.0	Jul 31, 2026, 21:05 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Older bundle	`215da5877219…`
19.1	Jul 14, 2026, 09:14 UTC (UTC+00:00)	1.0	Apr 16, 2025, 20:37 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Older bundle	`2026d7b5a99c…`

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]
ESET Industroyer
Anton Cherepanov. (2017, June 12). Win32/Industroyer: A new threat for industrial controls systems. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
Open source URL
[2]
Dragos Crashoverride 2018
Joe Slowik. (2018, October 12). Anatomy of an Attack: Detecting and Defeating CRASHOVERRIDE. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
Open source URL
[3]
mitre-attackC0025
Open source URL

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