C0052: SPACEHOP Activity
SPACEHOP Activity is conducted through commercially leased Virtual Private Servers (VPS), otherwise known as provisioned Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks. The network leveraged for SPACEHOP Activity enabled China-nexus cyber threat actors – such as APT5 and Ke3chang – to perform network reconnaissance scanning and vulnerability exploitation. SPACEHOP Activity has historically targeted entities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.[1]
Security context for executives and security teams
C0052: SPACEHOP Activity describes [SPACEHOP Activity](https://attack.mitre.org/campaigns/C0052) is conducted through commercially leased Virtual Private Servers (VPS), otherwise known as provisioned Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks. The network leveraged for SPACEHOP Activity enabled China-nexus cyber threat actors – such as [APT5](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1023) and [Ke3chang](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0004) – to perform network reconnaissance scanning and vulnerability exploitation. SPACEHOP Activity has historically targeted en...
Executive priority
C0052: SPACEHOP Activity 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 C0052: SPACEHOP Activity 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 C0052: SPACEHOP Activity 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.
SPACEHOP Activity
SPACEHOP Activity is conducted through commercially leased Virtual Private Servers (VPS), otherwise known as provisioned Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks. The network leveraged for SPACEHOP Activity enabled China-nexus cyber threat actors – such as APT5 and Ke3chang – to perform network reconnaissance scanning and vulnerability exploitation. SPACEHOP Activity has historically targeted entities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.[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 | T1090.003 | Multi-hop ProxySub-technique | SPACEHOP Activity has routed traffic through chains of compromised network devices to proxy C2 communications.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1190 | Exploit Public-Facing Application | SPACEHOP Activity has enabled the exploitation of CVE-2022-27518 and CVE-2022-27518 for illegitimate access.CitationNSA APT5 Citrix Threat Hunting December 2022[1] |
| Enterprise | T1583.003 | Virtual Private ServerSub-technique | SPACEHOP Activity has used acquired Virtual Private Servers as control systems for devices within the ORB network.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1588.002 | ToolSub-technique | SPACEHOP Activity leverages a C2 framework sourced from a publicly-available Github repository for administration of relay nodes.[1] |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0004: Ke3chang
G1023: APT5
APT5 is a China-based espionage actor that has been active since at least 2007 primarily targeting the telecommunications, aerospace, and defense industries throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. APT5 has displayed advanced tradecraft and significant interest in compromising networking devices and their underlying software including through the use of zero-day exploits.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
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 | c3a7adebff0a… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | fa5f1865c575… |
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]ORB Mandiant
Raggi, Michael. (2024, May 22). IOC Extinction? China-Nexus Cyber Espionage Actors Use ORB Networks to Raise Cost on Defenders. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
Open source URL - [2]mitre-attackC0052Open source URL
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