- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- Russia(high confidence)
- Sponsor
- State-sponsored, GRU
- Agency named
- GRU, Unit 29155
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage; Sabotage; Sabotage and destruction
- Seen
- 2020–2026
- Status
- Active
- ATT&CK
- G1003 · 47 techniques
- Sources
- 9 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0086 · ember-bear
What it is
Ember Bear is a Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2020, linked to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155). Ember Bear has primarily focused operations against Ukrainian government and telecommunication entities, but has also operated against critical infrastructure entities in Europe and the Americas. Ember Bear conducted the WhisperGate destructive wiper attacks against Ukraine in early 2022. There is some confusion as to whether Ember Bear overlaps with another Russian-linked entity referred to as Saint Bear. At present available evidence strongly suggests these are distinct activities with different behavioral profiles.
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-0056
- CrowdStrike
- Bleeding Bear
- Mandiant
- UNC2589
- Microsoft
- Cadet Blizzard, DEV-0586, Storm-0587
- MITRE ATT&CK
- G1003
- Proofpoint
- TA471
- Operations
- Operation “Bleeding Bear”
- Other names
- SaintBear, Frozenvista, Lorec53, Nascent Ursa, Nodaria, Ruinous Ursa, SaintBear, Lorec53
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
Targets
- Countries
- Georgia, Ukraine, United States
- Sectors
- Energy, Financial, Government, IT, Law enforcement, Media, NGOs, Transportation
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- Blizzard
- BloodHound
- CrackMapExec
- Cyber Eye RAT
- CyberGate
- Impacket
- P.A.S. Webshell
- PsExec
- Rclone
- Responder
- Saint Bot
- WhisperGate
- Wiper
- ngrok
- reGeorg
Sources
- MITRE ATT&CK attack.mitre.org
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de