G1002: BITTER

BITTER is a suspected South Asian cyber espionage threat group that has been active since at least 2013. BITTER has targeted government, energy, and engineering organizations in Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.[1][2]

EnterpriseG1002GroupObject v1.1ModifiedJul 31, 2026, 20:48 UTC (UTC+00:00)

G1002: BITTER describes [BITTER](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1002) is a suspected South Asian cyber espionage threat group that has been active since at least 2013. [BITTER](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1002) has targeted government, energy, and engineering organizations in Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.(Citation: Cisco Talos Bitter Bangladesh May 2022)(Citation: Forcepoint BITTER Pakistan Oct 2016)

Executive priority

G1002: BITTER 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 G1002: BITTER 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 G1002: BITTER 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

BITTER

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 techniques16 rows

Domain	ID	Name	Relationship / procedure
Enterprise	T1105	Ingress Tool Transfer	BITTER has downloaded additional malware and tools onto a compromised host.[1][2]
Enterprise	T1071.001	Web ProtocolsSub-technique	BITTER has used HTTP POST requests for C2.[1][2]
Enterprise	T1588.002	ToolSub-technique	BITTER has obtained tools such as PuTTY for use in their operations.[2]
Enterprise	T1568	Dynamic Resolution	BITTER has used DDNS for C2 communications.[2]
Enterprise	T1566.001	Spearphishing AttachmentSub-technique	BITTER has sent spearphishing emails with a malicious RTF document or Excel spreadsheet.[1][2]
Enterprise	T1204.002	Malicious FileSub-technique	BITTER has attempted to lure victims into opening malicious attachments delivered via spearphishing.[1][2]
Enterprise	T1027.013	Encrypted/Encoded FileSub-technique	BITTER has used a RAR SFX dropper to deliver malware.[2]
Enterprise	T1573	Encrypted Channel	BITTER has encrypted their C2 communications.[2]
Enterprise	T1068	Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	BITTER has exploited CVE-2021-1732 for privilege escalation.CitationDBAPPSecurity BITTER zero-day Feb 2021CitationMicrosoft CVE-2021-1732 Feb 2021
Enterprise	T1036.004	Masquerade Task or ServiceSub-technique	BITTER has disguised malware as a Windows Security update service.[1]
Enterprise	T1608.001	Upload MalwareSub-technique	BITTER has registered domains to stage payloads.[2]
Enterprise	T1559.002	Dynamic Data ExchangeSub-technique	BITTER has executed OLE objects using Microsoft Equation Editor to download and run malicious payloads.[1]
Enterprise	T1203	Exploitation for Client Execution	BITTER has exploited Microsoft Office vulnerabilities CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, and CVE-2018-0802.[1][2]
Enterprise	T1583.001	DomainsSub-technique	BITTER has registered a variety of domains to host malicious payloads and for C2.[2]
Enterprise	T1053.005	Scheduled TaskSub-technique	BITTER has used scheduled tasks for persistence and execution.[1]
Enterprise	T1095	Non-Application Layer Protocol	BITTER has used TCP for C2 communications.[2]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

S1013: ZxxZ

ZxxZ is a trojan written in Visual C++ that has been used by BITTER since at least August 2021, including against Bangladeshi government personnel.[1]

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: 1.1
Created: Jun 1, 2022, 20:26 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Modified: Jul 31, 2026, 20:48 UTC (UTC+00:00)
Raw hash: 1a6a84ec0b43c1a5...

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)	1.1	Jul 31, 2026, 20:48 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Current bundle	`1a6a84ec0b43…`
19.1	Jul 14, 2026, 09:14 UTC (UTC+00:00)	1.1	Apr 11, 2024, 02:52 UTC (UTC+00:00)	Older bundle	`67d537b4b3ff…`

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]
Cisco Talos Bitter Bangladesh May 2022
Raghuprasad, C . (2022, May 11). Bitter APT adds Bangladesh to their targets. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
Open source URL
[2]
Forcepoint BITTER Pakistan Oct 2016
Dela Paz, R. (2016, October 21). BITTER: a targeted attack against Pakistan. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
Open source URL
[3]
T-APT-17
(Citation: Cisco Talos Bitter Bangladesh May 2022)
[4]
mitre-attackG1002
Open source URL

Source and licensing

Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.

Official MITRE ATT&CK site Official STIX data repository MITRE ATT&CK terms of use