T1124: System Time Discovery

Sidewinder is a suspected Indian threat actor group that has been active since at least 2012. They have been observed targeting government, military, and business entities throughout Asia, primarily focusing on Pakistan, China, Nepal, and Afghanistan.[1][2][3]

Volt Typhoon is a People's Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored actor that has been active since at least 2021, primarily targeting critical infrastructure organizations in the US and its territories including Guam. Volt Typhoon's targeting and pattern of behavior have been assessed as pre-positioning to enable lateral movement to operational technology (OT) assets for potential destructive or disruptive attacks. Volt Typhoon has emphasized stealth in operations using web shells, living-off-the-land (LOTL) binaries, hands on keyboard activities, and stolen credentials.[1][2][3][4]. The group has leveraged compromised SOHO routers to proxy command and control traffic and obscure its infrastructure, activity associated with the KV botnet.[5].

Reporting indicates a separate initial access cluster, SYLVANITE, has been observed exploiting internet-facing edge devices and transferring access to Volt Typhoon, also tracked as VOLTZITE, for follow-on operations. [6]

Higaisa is a threat group suspected to have South Korean origins. Higaisa has targeted government, public, and trade organizations in North Korea; however, they have also carried out attacks in China, Japan, Russia, Poland, and other nations. Higaisa was first disclosed in early 2019 but is assessed to have operated as early as 2009.[1][2][3]

ZIRCONIUM is a threat group operating out of China, active since at least 2017, that has targeted individuals associated with the 2020 US presidential election and prominent leaders in the international affairs community.[1][2]

BRONZE BUTLER is a cyber espionage group with likely Chinese origins that has been active since at least 2008. The group primarily targets Japanese organizations, particularly those in government, biotechnology, electronics manufacturing, and industrial chemistry.[1][2][3]

APT38 is a North Korean state-sponsored threat group that specializes in financial cyber operations; it has been attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau.[1] Active since at least 2014, APT38 has targeted banks, financial institutions, casinos, cryptocurrency exchanges, SWIFT system endpoints, and ATMs in at least 38 countries worldwide. Significant operations include the 2016 Bank of Bangladesh heist, Bancomext [2] and Banco de Chile [2], along with software supply chain compromises and destructive malware attacks.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

North Korean group definitions are known to have significant overlap, and some security researchers report all North Korean state-sponsored cyber activity under the name Lazarus Group instead of tracking clusters or subgroups.

CURIUM is an Iranian threat group, first reported in September 2019 and active since at least July 2018, targeting IT service providers in the Middle East.[1] CURIUM has since invested in building relationships with potential targets via social media over a period of months to establish trust and confidence before sending malware. Security researchers note CURIUM has demonstrated great patience and persistence by chatting with potential targets daily and sending benign files to help lower their security consciousness.[2]

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]

Darkhotel is a suspected South Korean threat group that has targeted victims primarily in East Asia since at least 2004. The group's name is based on cyber espionage operations conducted via hotel Internet networks against traveling executives and other select guests. Darkhotel has also conducted spearphishing campaigns and infected victims through peer-to-peer and file sharing networks.[1][2][3]

Chimera is a suspected China-based threat group that has been active since at least 2018 targeting the semiconductor industry in Taiwan as well as data from the airline industry.[1][2]

FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been active since 2013. FIN7 has targeted the retail, restaurant, hospitality, software, consulting, financial services, medical equipment, cloud services, media, food and beverage, transportation, pharmaceutical, and utilities industries in the United States. A portion of FIN7 was operated out of a front company called Combi Security and often used point-of-sale malware for targeting efforts. Since 2020, FIN7 shifted operations to big game hunting (BGH), including use of REvil ransomware and their own Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), Darkside. FIN7 may be linked to the Carbanak Group, but multiple threat groups have been observed using Carbanak, leading these groups to be tracked separately.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

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]

Shamoon is wiper malware that was first used by an Iranian group known as the "Cutting Sword of Justice" in 2012. Other versions known as Shamoon 2 and Shamoon 3 were observed in 2016 and 2018. Shamoon has also been seen leveraging RawDisk and Filerase to carry out data wiping tasks. Analysis has linked Shamoon with Kwampirs based on multiple shared artifacts and coding patterns.[1] The term Shamoon is sometimes used to refer to the group using the malware as well as the malware itself.[2][3][4][5]

ShrinkLocker is a VBS-based malicious script that leverages the legitimate Bitlocker application to encrypt files on victim systems for ransom. ShrinkLocker functions by using Bitlocker to encrypt files, then renames impacted drives to the adversary’s contact email address to facilitate communication for the ransom payment.[1][2]

Astaroth is a Trojan and information stealer known to affect companies in Europe, Brazil, and throughout Latin America. It has been known publicly since at least late 2017. [1][2][3]

Zebrocy is a Trojan that has been used by APT28 since at least November 2015. The malware comes in several programming language variants, including C++, Delphi, AutoIt, C#, VB.NET, and Golang. [1][2][3][4]

ShadowPad is a modular backdoor that was first identified in a supply chain compromise of the NetSarang software in mid-July 2017. The malware was originally thought to be exclusively used by APT41, but has since been observed to be used by various Chinese threat activity groups. [1][2][3]

Taidoor is a remote access trojan (RAT) that has been used by Chinese government cyber actors to maintain access on victim networks.[1] Taidoor has primarily been used against Taiwanese government organizations since at least 2010.[2]

EvilBunny is a C++ malware sample observed since 2011 that was designed to be a execution platform for Lua scripts.[1]

T9000 is a backdoor that is a newer variant of the T5000 malware family, also known as Plat1. Its primary function is to gather information about the victim. It has been used in multiple targeted attacks against U.S.-based organizations. [1] [2]

KEYPLUG is a modular backdoor written in C++, with Windows and Linux variants, that has been used by APT41 since at least June 2021.[1]

The Net utility is a component of the Windows operating system. It is used in command-line operations for control of users, groups, services, and network connections. [1]

Net has a great deal of functionality, [2] much of which is useful for an adversary, such as gathering system and network information for Discovery, moving laterally through SMB/Windows Admin Shares using net use commands, and interacting with services. The net1.exe utility is executed for certain functionality when net.exe is run and can be used directly in commands such as net1 user.

SombRAT is a modular backdoor written in C++ that has been used since at least 2019 to download and execute malicious payloads, including FIVEHANDS ransomware.[1][2][3]

Epic is a backdoor that has been used by Turla. [1]

Operation CuckooBees was a cyber espionage campaign targeting technology and manufacturing companies in East Asia, Western Europe, and North America since at least 2019. Security researchers noted the goal of Operation CuckooBees, which was still ongoing as of May 2022, was likely the theft of proprietary information, research and development documents, source code, and blueprints for various technologies. Researchers assessed Operation CuckooBees was conducted by actors affiliated with Winnti Group, APT41, and BARIUM.[1]

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]