GINC-APT-0286 · State

Dark Basin

Also Mercenary.Amanda.

Category
State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
Origin
India(high confidence)
Sponsor
BellTroX InfoTech Services
Motivation
Information theft and espionage
Seen
2013
Sources
6 sources carry it
Identifier
GINC-APT-0286 · dark-basin

What it is

Dark Basin is a hack-for-hire group that has targeted thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions on six continents. Targets include advocacy groups and journalists, elected and senior government officials, hedge funds, and multiple industries. Dark Basin extensively targeted American nonprofits, including organisations working on a campaign called #ExxonKnew, which asserted that ExxonMobil hid information about climate change for decades. We also identify Dark Basin as the group behind the phishing of organizations working on net neutrality advocacy, previously reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We link Dark Basin with high confidence to an Indian company, BellTroX InfoTech Services, and related entitie

Names

The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.

Other names
Mercenary.Amanda

Attribution

Each attribution is a claim: who makes it, and to whom. Western and Eastern sources are kept apart, as they often disagree.

Targets

Countries
Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Czech, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States
Sectors
Financial, Government, Manufacturing, Media, NGOs, Non-profit organizations

Tools

The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.

  • Dark DDoSeR
  • MobileOrder

Sources