G0095: Machete

Machete is a suspected Spanish-speaking cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2010. It has primarily focused its operations within Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Venezuela, but also in the US, Europe, Russia, and parts of Asia. Machete generally targets high-profile organizations such as government institutions, intelligence services, and military units, as well as telecommunications and power companies.[1][2][3][4]

EnterpriseG0095GroupObject v2.0ModifiedJul 31, 2026, 18:47 UTC (UTC+00:00)

G0095: Machete describes [Machete](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0095) is a suspected Spanish-speaking cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2010. It has primarily focused its operations within Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Venezuela, but also in the US, Europe, Russia, and parts of Asia. [Machete](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0095) generally targets high-profile organizations such as government institutions, intelligence services, and military units, as well as telecommunications and power compani...

Executive priority

G0095: Machete is an official MITRE ATT&CK group. 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 G0095: Machete 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 G0095: Machete 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

Machete

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 techniques11 rows

Domain	ID	Name	Relationship / procedure
Enterprise	T1204.002	Malicious FileSub-technique	Machete has relied on users opening malicious attachments delivered through spearphishing to execute malware.[1][2][3][4]
Enterprise	T1566.002	Spearphishing LinkSub-technique	Machete has sent phishing emails that contain a link to an external server with ZIP and RAR archives.[1][3]
Enterprise	T1059.003	Windows Command ShellSub-technique	Machete has used batch files to initiate additional downloads of malicious files.[4]
Enterprise	T1059.005	Visual BasicSub-technique	Machete has embedded malicious macros within spearphishing attachments to download additional files.[4]
Enterprise	T1059.006	PythonSub-technique	Machete used multiple compiled Python scripts on the victim’s system. Machete's main backdoor Machete is also written in Python.[1][3][4]
Enterprise	T1053.005	Scheduled TaskSub-technique	Machete has created scheduled tasks to maintain Machete's persistence.[4]
Enterprise	T1036.005	Match Legitimate Resource Name or LocationSub-technique	Machete's Machete MSI installer has masqueraded as a legitimate Adobe Acrobat Reader installer.[4]
Enterprise	T1204.001	Malicious LinkSub-technique	Machete has has relied on users opening malicious links delivered through spearphishing to execute malware.[1][2][3]
Enterprise	T1189	Drive-by Compromise	Machete has distributed Machete through a fake blog website.[2]
Enterprise	T1566.001	Spearphishing AttachmentSub-technique	Machete has delivered spearphishing emails that contain a zipped file with malicious contents.[2][3][4]
Enterprise	T1218.007	MsiexecSub-technique	Machete has used msiexec to install the Machete malware.[4]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

S0409: Machete

Machete is a cyber espionage toolset used by Machete. It is a Python-based backdoor targeting Windows machines that was first observed in 2010.[1][2][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: 19.2
Object version: 2.0
Created: Sep 13, 2019, 12:37 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Modified: Jul 31, 2026, 18:47 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Raw hash: 5d6c2db4a5fbeff4...

Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)

Release	Bundle imported	Object version	Modified	Status	Raw hash
19.2	Aug 6, 2026, 02:58 UTC (UTC+00:00)	2.0	Jul 31, 2026, 18:47 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Current bundle	`5d6c2db4a5fb…`
19.1	Jul 14, 2026, 09:14 UTC (UTC+00:00)	2.0	Apr 25, 2025, 14:49 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Older bundle	`327dac98c1f9…`

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]
Cylance Machete Mar 2017
The Cylance Threat Research Team. (2017, March 22). El Machete's Malware Attacks Cut Through LATAM. Retrieved September 13, 2019.
Open source URL
[2]
Securelist Machete Aug 2014
Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team. (2014, August 20). El Machete. Retrieved September 13, 2019.
Open source URL
[3]
ESET Machete July 2019
ESET. (2019, July). MACHETE JUST GOT SHARPER Venezuelan government institutions under attack. Retrieved September 13, 2019.
Open source URL
[4]
360 Machete Sep 2020
kate. (2020, September 25). APT-C-43 steals Venezuelan military secrets to provide intelligence support for the reactionaries — HpReact campaign. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
Open source URL
[5]
APT-C-43
(Citation: 360 Machete Sep 2020)
[6]
El Machete
(Citation: Cylance Machete Mar 2017)
[7]
Machete
(Citation: Securelist Machete Aug 2014)(Citation: ESET Machete July 2019)(
[8]
mitre-attackG0095
Open source URL

Source and licensing

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