GINC-APT-0400 · State

Earth Krahang

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.

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