G0131: Tonto Team
Tonto Team is a suspected Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage threat group that has primarily targeted South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States since at least 2009; by 2020 they expanded operations to include other Asian as well as Eastern European countries. Tonto Team has targeted government, military, energy, mining, financial, education, healthcare, and technology organizations, including through the Heartbeat Campaign (2009-2012) and Operation Bitter Biscuit (2017).[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Security context for executives and security teams
G0131: Tonto Team describes [Tonto Team](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0131) is a suspected Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage threat group that has primarily targeted South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States since at least 2009; by 2020 they expanded operations to include other Asian as well as Eastern European countries. [Tonto Team](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0131) has targeted government, military, energy, mining, financial, education, healthcare, and technology organizations, including through the Heartbeat Campaig...
Executive priority
G0131: Tonto Team 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 G0131: Tonto Team 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 G0131: Tonto Team 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.
Tonto Team
Tonto Team is a suspected Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage threat group that has primarily targeted South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States since at least 2009; by 2020 they expanded operations to include other Asian as well as Eastern European countries. Tonto Team has targeted government, military, energy, mining, financial, education, healthcare, and technology organizations, including through the Heartbeat Campaign (2009-2012) and Operation Bitter Biscuit (2017).[1][2][3][4][5][6]
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 | T1135 | Network Share Discovery | Tonto Team has used tools such as NBTscan to enumerate network shares.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1574.001 | DLLSub-technique | Tonto Team abuses a legitimate and signed Microsoft executable to launch a malicious DLL.[2] |
| Enterprise | T1090.002 | External ProxySub-technique | Tonto Team has routed their traffic through an external server in order to obfuscate their location.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1059.006 | PythonSub-technique | Tonto Team has used Python-based tools for execution.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1069.001 | Local GroupsSub-technique | Tonto Team has used the |
| Enterprise | T1056.001 | KeyloggingSub-technique | Tonto Team has used keylogging tools in their operations.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1505.003 | Web ShellSub-technique | Tonto Team has used a first stage web shell after compromising a vulnerable Exchange server.[2] |
| Enterprise | T1203 | Exploitation for Client Execution | Tonto Team has exploited Microsoft vulnerabilities, including CVE-2018-0798, CVE-2018-8174, CVE-2018-0802, CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2019-9489 CVE-2020-8468, and CVE-2018-0798 to enable execution of their delivered malicious payloads.[1][7][9][6] |
| Enterprise | T1204.002 | Malicious FileSub-technique | Tonto Team has relied on user interaction to open their malicious RTF documents.[7][9] |
| Enterprise | T1566.001 | Spearphishing AttachmentSub-technique | Tonto Team has delivered payloads via spearphishing attachments.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1059.001 | PowerShellSub-technique | Tonto Team has used PowerShell to download additional payloads.[2] |
| Enterprise | T1068 | Exploitation for Privilege Escalation | Tonto Team has exploited CVE-2019-0803 and MS16-032 to escalate privileges.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1105 | Ingress Tool Transfer | Tonto Team has downloaded malicious DLLs which served as a ShadowPad loader.[2] |
| Enterprise | T1210 | Exploitation of Remote Services | Tonto Team has used EternalBlue exploits for lateral movement.[7] |
| Enterprise | T1003 | OS Credential Dumping | Tonto Team has used a variety of credential dumping tools.[7] |
Groups, software, and campaigns
S0002: Mimikatz
S0268: Bisonal
Bisonal is a remote access tool (RAT) that has been used by Tonto Team against public and private sector organizations in Russia, South Korea, and Japan since at least December 2010.[1][2]
S0596: ShadowPad
S0349: LaZagne
S0590: NBTscan
S0008: gsecdump
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 | 1.1 | Current bundle | db26de4ef213… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.1 | Older bundle | ceb4d4e9ea66… |
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]Kaspersky CactusPete Aug 2020
Zykov, K. (2020, August 13). CactusPete APT group’s updated Bisonal backdoor. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
Open source URL - [2]ESET Exchange Mar 2021
Faou, M., Tartare, M., Dupuy, T. (2021, March 10). Exchange servers under siege from at least 10 APT groups. Retrieved May 21, 2021.
Open source URL - [3]FireEye Chinese Espionage October 2019
Nalani Fraser, Kelli Vanderlee. (2019, October 10). Achievement Unlocked - Chinese Cyber Espionage Evolves to Support Higher Level Missions. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
Open source URL - [4]ARS Technica China Hack SK April 2017
Sean Gallagher. (2017, April 21). Researchers claim China trying to hack South Korea missile defense efforts. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
Open source URL - [5]Trend Micro HeartBeat Campaign January 2013
Roland Dela Paz. (2003, January 3). The HeartBeat APT Campaign. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
Open source URL - [6]Talos Bisonal 10 Years March 2020
Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres, Vitor Ventura. (2020, March 6). Bisonal 10 Years of Play. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
Open source URL - [7]TrendMicro Tonto Team October 2020
Daniel Lughi, Jaromir Horejsi. (2020, October 2). Tonto Team - Exploring the TTPs of an advanced threat actor operating a large infrastructure. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
Open source URL - [8]Secureworks BRONZE HUNTLEY
Secureworks. (2021, January 1). BRONZE HUNTLEY Threat Profile. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
Open source URL - [9]Talos Bisonal Mar 2020
Mercer, W., et al. (2020, March 5). Bisonal: 10 years of play. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
Open source URL - [10]BRONZE HUNTLEY
(Citation: Secureworks BRONZE HUNTLEY )
- [11]CactusPete
(Citation: Kaspersky CactusPete Aug 2020)
- [12]CrowdStrike Manufacturing Threat July 2020
Falcon OverWatch Team. (2020, July 14). Manufacturing Industry in the Adversaries’ Crosshairs. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
Open source URL - [13]Earth Akhlut
(Citation: TrendMicro Tonto Team October 2020)
- [14]Karma Panda
(Citation: Kaspersky CactusPete Aug 2020)(Citation: CrowdStrike Manufacturing Threat July 2020)
- [15]Tonto Team
(Citation: Talos Bisonal Mar 2020)
- [16]mitre-attackG0131Open source URL
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