C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions
Leviathan Australian Intrusions consisted of at least two long-term intrusions against victims in Australia by Leviathan, relying on similar tradecraft such as external service exploitation followed by extensive credential capture and re-use to enable privilege escalation and lateral movement. Leviathan Australian Intrusions were focused on exfiltrating sensitive data including valid credentials for the victim organizations.[1]
Security context for executives and security teams
C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions describes [Leviathan Australian Intrusions](https://attack.mitre.org/campaigns/C0049) consisted of at least two long-term intrusions against victims in Australia by [Leviathan](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0065), relying on similar tradecraft such as external service exploitation followed by extensive credential capture and re-use to enable privilege escalation and lateral movement. [Leviathan Australian Intrusions](https://attack.mitre.org/campaigns/C0049) were focused on exfiltrating sensitive data including valid cred...
Executive priority
C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions 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 C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions 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 C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions 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.
Leviathan Australian Intrusions
Leviathan Australian Intrusions consisted of at least two long-term intrusions against victims in Australia by Leviathan, relying on similar tradecraft such as external service exploitation followed by extensive credential capture and re-use to enable privilege escalation and lateral movement. Leviathan Australian Intrusions were focused on exfiltrating sensitive data including valid credentials for the victim organizations.[1]
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.
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.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1021.002 | SMB/Windows Admin SharesSub-technique | Leviathan used remote shares to move laterally through victim networks during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1074.001 | Local Data StagingSub-technique | Leviathan stored captured credential material on local log files on victim systems during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1615 | Group Policy Discovery | Leviathan performed extensive Active Directory enumeration of victim environments during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1213.006 | DatabasesSub-technique | Leviathan gathered information from SQL servers and Building Management System (BMS) servers during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1552 | Unsecured Credentials | Leviathan gathered credentials hardcoded in binaries located on victim devices during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1078.002 | Domain AccountsSub-technique | Leviathan compromised domain credentials during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1686 | Disable or Modify System Firewall | Leviathan modified system firewalls to add two open listening ports on 9998 and 9999 during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1552.001 | Credentials In FilesSub-technique | Leviathan gathered credentials stored in files related to Building Management System (BMS) operations during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1082 | System Information Discovery | Leviathan performed host enumeration and data gathering operations on victim machines during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1018 | Remote System Discovery | Leviathan performed extensive remote host enumeration to build their own map of victim networks during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1190 | Exploit Public-Facing Application | Leviathan exploited public-facing web applications and appliances for initial access during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1558.003 | KerberoastingSub-technique | Leviathan used Kerberoasting techniques during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1041 | Exfiltration Over C2 Channel | Leviathan exfiltrated collected data over existing command and control channels during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1482 | Domain Trust Discovery | Leviathan performed Active Directory enumeration of victim environments during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1135 | Network Share Discovery | Leviathan scanned and enumerated remote network shares in victim environments during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1594 | Search Victim-Owned Websites | Leviathan enumerated compromised web application resources to identify additional endpoints and resources linkd to the website for follow-on access during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1078 | Valid Accounts | Leviathan used captured, valid account information to log into victim web applications and appliances during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1056 | Input Capture | Leviathan captured submitted multfactor authentication codes and other technical artifacts related to remote access sessions during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1505.003 | Web ShellSub-technique | Leviathan relied extensively on web shell use following initial access for persistence and command execution purposes in victim environments during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1078.003 | Local AccountsSub-technique | Leviathan used captured local account information, such as service accounts, for actions during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1068 | Exploitation for Privilege Escalation | Leviathan exploited software vulnerabilities in victim environments to escalate privileges during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1528 | Steal Application Access Token | Leviathan abused access to compromised appliances to collect JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), used for creating virtual desktop sessions, during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1111 | Multi-Factor Authentication Interception | Leviathan abused compromised appliance access to collect multifactor authentication token values during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1021.004 | SSHSub-technique | Leviathan used SSH brute force techniques to move laterally within victim environments during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1212 | Exploitation for Credential Access | Leviathan exploited vulnerable network appliances during Leviathan Australian Intrusions, leading to the collection and exfiltration of valid credentials.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1588.006 | VulnerabilitiesSub-technique | Leviathan weaponized publicly-known vulnerabilities for initial access and other purposes during Leviathan Australian Intrusions.[1] |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0065: Leviathan
Leviathan is a Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage group that has been attributed to the Ministry of State Security's (MSS) Hainan State Security Department and an affiliated front company.[1] Active since at least 2009, Leviathan has targeted the following sectors: academia, aerospace/aviation, biomedical, defense industrial base, government, healthcare, manufacturing, maritime, and transportation across the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.[1][2][3][4]
All related ATT&CK context
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.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | 55cc8e256d37… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | f6cdf1065b69… |
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.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]CISA Leviathan 2024
CISA et al. (2024, July 8). People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security APT40 Tradecraft in Action. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
Open source URL - [2]mitre-attackC0049Open source URL
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