- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- Russia(high confidence)
- Sponsor
- State-sponsored, two GRU units known as Unit 26165 and Unit 74455
- Agency named
- GRU, GTsSS, NSA, Unit 26165, Unit 74455
- Motivation
- Espionage; Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2004–2026
- Status
- Active
- ATT&CK
- G0007 · 93 techniques
- Sources
- 15 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0004 · apt28
What it is
APT28 is a threat group that has been attributed to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS) military unit 26165. This group has been active since at least 2004.
APT28 reportedly compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016 in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. In 2018, the US indicted five GRU Unit 26165 officers associated with APT28 for cyber operations (including close-access operations) conducted between 2014 and 2018 against the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the US Anti-Doping Agency, a US nuclear facility, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Spiez Swiss Chemicals Laboratory, and other organizations. Some of these were conducted with the assistance of GRU Unit 74455, which is also referred to as Sandworm Team.
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- CERT-UA
- UAC-0063, UAC-0001, UAC-0028
- CrowdStrike
- Fancy Bear
- IBM X-Force
- ITG05
- Mandiant
- APT 28
- Microsoft
- Forest Blizzard
- MITRE ATT&CK
- G0007
- NSA leak
- SIG40
- Proofpoint
- TA422
- PwC
- Blue Athena
- Qihoo 360
- APT-C-20
- Recorded Future
- TAG-0700, TAG-110
- Secureworks
- IRON TWILIGHT, TG-4127, Threat Group-4127
- Talos and others
- Group 74
- Thales
- ATK5
- Operations
- Operation Pawn Storm, Operation “DealersChoice”, Operation “Dear Joohn”, Operation “Komplex”, Operation “Pawn Storm”, Operation “RoundPress”, Operation “Russian Doll”, Operation “Steal-It”
- Other names
- Sofacy, STRONTIUM, Armada Collective, ATG2, ATK 5, BlueDelta, CrisisFour, Dark Power, Fighting Ursa, FROZENLAKE, Grey-Cloud, Grizzly Steppe, Group-4127, GruesomeLarch, HELLFIRE, LAKE RELIC, Pawn Storm, PawnStorm, Sednit, SNAKEMACKEREL, Sofacy Group, Sofacy, APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sednit, Swallowtail, T-APT-12, Tsar Team, TsarTeam, Z-Lom Team
Attribution
Each attribution is a claim: who makes it, and to whom. Western and Eastern sources are kept apart, as they often disagree.
Western sources
- ETDA / ThaiCERTRussia
- MISP Galaxy (CFR tagging)Russia
- MicrosoftRussia
- ThreatActor.info (Malpedia et al.)Russia · high
Chinese and Russian sources
- Qihoo 360Russia
Targets
- Countries
- Afghanistan, Armenia, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, European Commission, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, India, International Association of Athletics Federations, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, NATO, Netherlands, Norway, OSCE, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Türkiye, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, World Anti-Doping Agency
- Sectors
- Automotive, Aviation, Chemical, Construction, Defense, Education, Embassies, Energy, Engineering, Financial, Government, Government, Administration, Healthcare, Industrial, IT, Media, Military, NGOs, Oil and gas, Security Service, Think Tanks
Tools
The first 60 of 78 tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- ADVSTORESHELL
- ArguePatch
- BEARDSHELL
- Backdoor.Oldrea
- BadPaw
- CHOPSTICK
- CORESHELL
- CaddyWiper
- Cannon
- Cherry Picker
- Computrace
- Coreshell
- CredoMap
- Cyber Eye RAT
- CyberGate
- DealersChoice
- DownRange
- Downdelph
- DriveOcean
- Drovorub
- Foozer
- Forfiles
- FusionDrive
- Fysbis
- GONEPOSTAL
- GooseEgg
- Graphite
- HIDEDRV
- HTTP WEB BACKDOOR
- HideDrv (Rootkit)
- JHUHUGIT
- Koadic
- Komplex
- LAMEHUG
- LoJax
- MASEPIE
- Mimikatz
- Mocky LNK
- Net
- OCEANMAP
- OLDBAIT
- PixyNetLoader
- PocoDown
- Promptflux
- Promptsteal
- Responder
- SLIMAGENT
- SOURFACE
- STEELHOOK
- Sedkit
- Sednit
- Sedreco
- Sedreco Dropper
- SeduUploader
- Seduploader
- Sofacy
- SpyPress
- Tor
- USBStealer
- Unidentified 078 (Zebrocy Nim Loader?)
Sources
- MITRE ATT&CK attack.mitre.org
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de
- Qihoo 360 apt.360.net