G1049: AppleJeus
AppleJeus is a North Korean state-sponsored threat group attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau. Associated with the broader Lazarus Group umbrella of actors, AppleJeus has been active since at least 2018 and is closely aligned in resources with TEMP.hermit, another DPRK-affiliated group under the same umbrella.[1] The group’s primary mission is to generate and launder revenue to provide financial support to the government. AppleJeus primarily targets the cryptocurrency industry and is most notably responsible for the 3CX Supply Chain Attack.[2] The group traditionally deploys malicious cryptocurrency software in combination with Phishing. From these compromised environments, it selectively deploys additional backdoors to enable extended operations against high-value financial targets.[3][4]
Security context for executives and security teams
G1049: AppleJeus describes [AppleJeus](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1049) is a North Korean state-sponsored threat group attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau. Associated with the broader [Lazarus Group](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0032) umbrella of actors, [AppleJeus](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1049) has been active since at least 2018 and is closely aligned in resources with TEMP.hermit, another DPRK-affiliated group under the same umbrella.(Citation: dtex DPRK 2025 structure ITworkers) The group’s primary mission ...
Executive priority
G1049: AppleJeus 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 G1049: AppleJeus 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 G1049: AppleJeus 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.
AppleJeus
AppleJeus is a North Korean state-sponsored threat group attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau. Associated with the broader Lazarus Group umbrella of actors, AppleJeus has been active since at least 2018 and is closely aligned in resources with TEMP.hermit, another DPRK-affiliated group under the same umbrella.[1] The group’s primary mission is to generate and launder revenue to provide financial support to the government. AppleJeus primarily targets the cryptocurrency industry and is most notably responsible for the 3CX Supply Chain Attack.[2] The group traditionally deploys malicious cryptocurrency software in combination with Phishing. From these compromised environments, it selectively deploys additional backdoors to enable extended operations against high-value financial targets.[3][4]
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.
Groups, software, and campaigns
C0057: 3CX Supply Chain Attack
The 3CX Supply Chain Attack was the first publicly reported case of one supply chain compromise triggering another, leading to a cascading, two-stage intrusion. The initial supply chain attack began when a 3CX employee downloaded and executed a trojanized, end-of-life version of the X_Trader trading software from Trading Technologies. This provided UNC4736, a threat cluster associated with AppleJeus, access to the 3CX environment. From there UNC4736 compromised the Windows and macOS build environments used to distribute the 3CX desktop application to their customers.[1] While 3CX serves more than 600,000 customers and 12 million users, only a subset of systems were affected. Subsequent targeting focused on victims in the defense and cryptocurrency sectors, where attackers deployed secondary payloads such as Gopuram for credential theft and persistence.[2] The campaign began in late 2022 and was disrupted after security vendors publicly reported the compromise in March 2023.[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 | b63afd21801a… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | 01c7a52de147… |
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]dtex DPRK 2025 structure ITworkers
Michael “Barni” Barnhart, DTEX, and Anonymous SMEs. (2025, May 14). Exposing DPRK's Cyber Syndicate and Hidden IT Workforce. Retrieved September 3, 2025.
Open source URL - [2]Mandiant 3cx UNC4736 2023
Jeff Johnson, Fred Plan, Adrian Sanchez, Renato Fontana, Jake Nicastro, Dimiter Andonov, Marius Fodoreanu, Daniel Scott. (2023, April 20). 3CX Software Supply Chain Compromise Initiated by a Prior Software Supply Chain Compromise; Suspected North Korean Actor Responsible. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
Open source URL - [3]Mandiant DPRK Groups 2023
Michael Barnhart, Austin Larsen, Jeff Johnson, Taylor Long, Michelle Cantos, Adrian Hernandez. (2023, October 10). Assessed Cyber Structure and Alignments of North Korea in 2023. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
Open source URL - [4]JPCert Blog Laz Subgroups 2025
佐々木勇人 Hayato Sasaki. (2025, March 25). Tempted to Classifying APT Actors: Practical Challenges of Attribution in the Case of Lazarus’s Subgroup. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
Open source URL - [5]Citrine Sleet
(Citation: Unit42 DPRK Threat Groups 2024)
- [6]Gleaming Pisces
(Citation: Unit42 DPRK Threat Groups 2024)
- [7]UNC1720
(Citation: JPCert Blog Laz Subgroups 2025)(Citation: Mandiant DPRK Groups 2023)
- [8]UNC4736
(Citation: dtex DPRK 2025 structure ITworkers)(Citation: Mandiant 3cx UNC4736 2023)
- [9]Unit42 DPRK Threat Groups 2024
Unit 42. (2024, September 9). Threat Assessment: North Korean Threat Groups. Retrieved August 25, 2025.
Open source URL - [10]mitre-attackG1049Open source URL
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