T1027.005: Indicator Removal from Tools

GALLIUM is a cyberespionage group that has been active since at least 2012, primarily targeting telecommunications companies, financial institutions, and government entities in Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mozambique, the Philippines, Russia, and Vietnam. This group is particularly known for launching Operation Soft Cell, a long-term campaign targeting telecommunications providers.[1] Security researchers have identified GALLIUM as a likely Chinese state-sponsored group, based in part on tools used and TTPs commonly associated with Chinese threat actors.[1][2][3]

APT3 is a China-based threat group that researchers have attributed to China's Ministry of State Security.[1][2] This group is responsible for the campaigns known as Operation Clandestine Fox, Operation Clandestine Wolf, and Operation Double Tap.[1][3] As of June 2015, the group appears to have shifted from targeting primarily US victims to primarily political organizations in Hong Kong.[4]

Patchwork is a cyber espionage group that was first observed in December 2015. While the group has not been definitively attributed, circumstantial evidence suggests the group may be a pro-Indian or Indian entity. Patchwork has been seen targeting industries related to diplomatic and government agencies. Much of the code used by this group was copied and pasted from online forums. Patchwork was also seen operating spearphishing campaigns targeting U.S. think tank groups in March and April of 2018.[1] [2][3][4]

UNC3886 is a China-nexus cyberespionage group that has been active since at least 2022, targeting defense, technology, and telecommunication organizations located in the United States and the Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) regions. UNC3886 has displayed a deep understanding of edge devices and virtualization technologies through the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities and the use of novel malware families and utilities.[1][2]

OilRig is a suspected Iranian threat group that has targeted Middle Eastern and international victims since at least 2014. The group has targeted a variety of sectors, including financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications. It appears the group carries out supply chain attacks, leveraging the trust relationship between organizations to attack their primary targets. The group works on behalf of the Iranian government based on infrastructure details that contain references to Iran, use of Iranian infrastructure, and targeting that aligns with nation-state interests.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Turla is a cyber espionage threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). They have compromised victims in over 50 countries since at least 2004, spanning a range of industries including government, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies. Turla is known for conducting watering hole and spearphishing campaigns, and leveraging in-house tools and malware, such as Uroburos.[1][2][3][4][5]

Deep Panda is a suspected Chinese threat group known to target many industries, including government, defense, financial, and telecommunications. [1] The intrusion into healthcare company Anthem has been attributed to Deep Panda. [2] This group is also known as Shell Crew, WebMasters, KungFu Kittens, and PinkPanther. [3] Deep Panda also appears to be known as Black Vine based on the attribution of both group names to the Anthem intrusion. [4] Some analysts track Deep Panda and APT19 as the same group, but it is unclear from open source information if the groups are the same. [5]

GravityRAT is a remote access tool (RAT) and has been in ongoing development since 2016. The actor behind the tool remains unknown, but two usernames have been recovered that link to the author, which are "TheMartian" and "The Invincible." According to the National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) of India, the malware has been identified in attacks against organization and entities in India. [1]

InvisiMole is a modular spyware program that has been used by the InvisiMole Group since at least 2013. InvisiMole has two backdoor modules called RC2FM and RC2CL that are used to perform post-exploitation activities. It has been discovered on compromised victims in the Ukraine and Russia. Gamaredon Group infrastructure has been used to download and execute InvisiMole against a small number of victims.[1][2]

Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.[1]

In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz.[1]

SUNBURST is a trojanized DLL designed to fit within the SolarWinds Orion software update framework. It was used by APT29 since at least February 2020.[1][2]

Daserf is a backdoor that has been used to spy on and steal from Japanese, South Korean, Russian, Singaporean, and Chinese victims. Researchers have identified versions written in both Visual C and Delphi. [1] [2]

Penquin is a remote access trojan (RAT) with multiple versions used by Turla to target Linux systems since at least 2014.[1][2]

QakBot is a modular banking trojan that has been used primarily by financially-motivated actors since at least 2007. QakBot is continuously maintained and developed and has evolved from an information stealer into a delivery agent for ransomware, most notably ProLock and Egregor.[1][2][3][4]

Waterbear is modular malware attributed to BlackTech that has been used primarily for lateral movement, decrypting, and triggering payloads and is capable of hiding network behaviors.[1]

PowerSploit is an open source, offensive security framework comprised of PowerShell modules and scripts that perform a wide range of tasks related to penetration testing such as code execution, persistence, bypassing anti-virus, recon, and exfiltration. [1] [2] [3]

Triton Safety Instrumented System Attack was a campaign employed by TEMP.Veles which leveraged the Triton malware framework against a petrochemical organization.[1] The malware and techniques used within this campaign targeted specific Triconex Safety Controllers within the environment.[2] The incident was eventually discovered due to a safety trip that occurred as a result of an issue in the malware.[3]

Operation Wocao was a cyber espionage campaign that targeted organizations around the world, including in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The suspected China-based actors compromised government organizations and managed service providers, as well as aviation, construction, energy, finance, health care, insurance, offshore engineering, software development, and transportation companies.[1]

Security researchers assessed the Operation Wocao actors used similar TTPs and tools as APT20, suggesting a possible overlap. Operation Wocao was named after an observed command line entry by one of the threat actors, possibly out of frustration from losing webshell access.[1]