GINC-APT-0064 · State

Flax Typhoon

Also RedJuliett, Ethereal Panda, Storm-0919.

Category
State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
Origin
China(high confidence)
Sponsor
State-sponsored
Motivation
Information theft and espionage
Seen
2021
Sources
10 sources carry it
Identifier
GINC-APT-0064 · flax-typhoon

What it is

Flax Typhoon is a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor that primarily targets organizations in Taiwan. They conduct espionage campaigns and focus on gaining and maintaining long-term access to networks using minimal malware. Flax Typhoon relies on tools built into the operating system and legitimate software to remain undetected. They exploit vulnerabilities in public-facing servers, use living-off-the-land techniques, and deploy a VPN connection to maintain persistence and move laterally within compromised networks.

Names

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

CrowdStrike
Ethereal Panda
Microsoft
Storm-0919
Other names
RedJuliett

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
Djibouti, Hong Kong, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Rwanda, South Korea, Taiwan, United States
Sectors
Education, Government, IT, Manufacturing

Tools

The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.

  • China Chopper
  • GodZilla webshell
  • Minimo
  • UNITEDRAKE
  • Xploit

Sources