- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- China(high confidence)
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2022
- Sources
- 5 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0400 · earth-krahang
What it is
Earth Krahang is an APT group targeting government organizations worldwide. They use spear-phishing emails, weak internet-facing servers, and custom backdoors like Cobalt Strike, RESHELL, and XDealer to conduct cyber espionage. The group creates VPN servers on infected systems, employs brute force attacks on email accounts, and exploits compromised government infrastructure to attack other governments. Earth Krahang has been linked to another China-linked actor, Earth Lusca, and is believed to be part of a specialized task force for cyber espionage against government institutions.
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
Targets
- Countries
- Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Ecuador, Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam
- Sectors
- Defense, Education, Financial, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, IT, Manufacturing, Media, NGOs, Retail, Shipping and Logistics, Telecommunications
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- Backdoor.Oldrea
- China Chopper
- Cobalt Strike
- Cyber Eye RAT
- CyberGate
- DinodasRAT
- PlugX
- Reshell
- ShadowPad Winnti
- Xploit
Sources
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de