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APT-C-34

APT Group Information theft and espionage ETDA ✓

Also Known As 1 names

Golden Falcon

Target Countries 1

Countries highlighted in red

China

Sectors Targeted

Telecommunications 517

Details

Origin 🇮🇷 IR

Last Updated 01 Jun 2022

Malware Families 22

rcs

redcap

google_drive_rat

nautilus

lokirat

neuron

STEALHOOK

pickpocket

jason

elmachete_dropper_2022

saitama

valuevault

pyark

longwatch

spynote

twoface

Loki RAT

alma_communicator

karkoff

tonedeaf

ismagent

ismdoor

MITRE ATT&CK 119

T1003 T1003.001 T1003.004 T1003.005 T1005 T1007 T1008 T1012 T1016 T1021 T1021.001 T1021.004 T1025 T1027 - Obfuscated Files or Information T1027.005 T1027.013 T1033 T1036 T1036.005 T1046 T1047 T1048 T1048.003 T1049 T1053 T1053.005 T1055 - Process Injection T1056 T1056.001 T1057 T1059 T1059.001 T1059.003 T1059.005 T1059.006 T1068 T1069 T1069.001 T1069.002 T1070 T1070.004 T1071 T1071.001 T1071.004 T1074 T1074.001 T1078 T1078.002 T1082 T1087 T1087.001 T1087.002 T1105 - Ingress Tool Transfer T1106 - Native API T1110 T1112 T1113 T1115 T1119 T1120 T1132 T1132.001 T1133 T1137 T1137.004 T1140 - Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information T1189 T1195 T1201 T1203 T1204 - User Execution T1204.001 T1204.002 T1217 T1218 T1218.001 T1218.007 T1219 T1497 T1497.001 T1505 T1505.003 T1518 T1543 T1543.003 T1552 T1552.001 T1553 T1553.002 T1555 T1555.003 T1555.004 T1556 T1556.002 T1562 T1562.004 T1566 - Phishing T1566.001 T1566.002 T1566.003 T1572 T1573 T1573.002 T1574 - Hijack Execution Flow T1583 T1583.001 T1584 T1584.004 T1585 T1585.003 T1586 T1586.002 T1587 T1587.001 T1588 T1588.002 T1588.003 T1608 T1608.001

Related Zero-Days

No zero-day CVE linked to this actor

Known Names 5 entries

DustSquad Kaspersky

Golden Falcon Qihoo 360

APT-C-34 Qihoo 360

Nomadic Octopus ESET

G0133 MITRE

Observed Target Countries 3

Based on ETDA data — countries highlighted in red

Afghanistan Kazakhstan Central Asia

Description

(Kaspersky) For the last two years we have been monitoring a Russian-language cyberespionage actor that focuses on Central Asian users and diplomatic entities. We named the actor DustSquad and have provided private intelligence reports to our customers on four of their campaigns involving custom Android and Windows malware. In this blogpost we cover a malicious program for Windows called Octopus that mostly targets diplomatic entities. The name was originally coined by ESET in 2017 after the 0ct0pus3.php script used by the actor on their old C2 servers. We also started monitoring the malware and, using Kaspersky Attribution Engine based on similarity algorithms, discovered that Octopus is related to DustSquad, something we reported in April 2018. In our telemetry we tracked this campaign back to 2014 in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (still mostly Russian-speaking), plus Afghanistan.

Tools Used 4

Harpoon Octopus Paperbug Remote Control System

Operations 1

2020 Nomadic Octopus’ Paperbug Campaign https://www.prodaft.com/m/reports/PAPERBUG_TLPWHITE-1.pdf

Reports & References 2

https://securelist.com/octopus-infested-seas-of-central-asia/88200/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/extensive-hacking-operation-discovered-in-kazakhstan/

ETDA Profile

DustSquad, Golden Falcon

Origin

Russia

First Seen 2014

Motivation

Information theft and espionage

MITRE ATT&CK Groups

https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0133/

View on ETDA APT Groups ↗