- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- United States(high confidence)
- Sponsor
- State-sponsored, CIA
- Agency named
- CIA
- Motivation
- Espionage; Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2009–2017
- Status
- Dormant
- Sources
- 8 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0131 · longhorn
What it is
Longhorn has been active since at least 2011. It has used a range of back door Trojans in addition to zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise its targets. Longhorn has infiltrated governments and internationally operating organizations, in addition to targets in the financial, telecoms, energy, aerospace, information technology, education, and natural resources sectors. All of the organizations targeted would be of interest to a nation-state attacker. Longhorn has infected 40 targets in at least 16 countries across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa. On one occasion a computer in the United States was compromised but, following infection, an uninstaller was launched within hours, which may indicate this victim was infected unintentionally. According to cfr, this threat actor compromises governments, international organizations, academic institutions, and financial, telecommunications, energy, aerospace, information technology, and natural resource industries for espionage purposes. Some of the tools used by this threat actor were released by Wikileaks under the name "Vault 7."
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- Qihoo 360
- APT-C-39
- Other names
- CIA, CIA - APT-C-39, Lamberts, Longhorn, The Lamberts, Platinum Terminal, The Lamberts
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 / ThaiCERTUnited States
- MISP Galaxy (CFR tagging)United States
- ThreatActor.info (Malpedia et al.)United States
Chinese and Russian sources
- Qihoo 360United States
- 360 Digital Security Group · 2020-03360 links APT-C-39 to CIA via Vault 7 tooling (Fluxwire, Grasshopper, Athena, AfterMidnight, HIVE); claims an 11-year campaign against Chinese aerospace, research, petroleum, internet and government targets.United States · high (claimant)
- Kaspersky · 2017-04Kaspersky's Lamberts family matched to Symantec's Longhorn and to WikiLeaks Vault 7.United States · medium
Targets
- Countries
- China, Global
- Sectors
- Aerospace, Aviation, Education, Energy, Finance, Financial, Government, Government, Administration, IT, News - Media, Oil and gas, Private sector, Research, Telecommunications, Telecoms
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- Back Orifice
- Back Orifice 2000
- Black Lambert
- Blue Lambert
- Corentry
- CrossRat
- Cyan Lambert
- Gray Lambert
- Green Lambert
- Lambert
- Magenta Lambert
- Pink Lambert
- Purple Lambert
- SPACESHIP
- Silver Lambert
- Trojan.Karagany
- Trojan.Mebromi
- UNITEDRAKE
- Violet Lambert
- White Lambert
- everything in the [Vault 7/8] archives
Sources
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de
- Qihoo 360 apt.360.net