- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- China(high confidence)
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2022
- Sources
- 7 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0232 · red-dev-61
What it is
While Volexity largely observed the attacker essentially living off the land, they still deployed a handful of malware files and tools during the course of the incident which primarily consisted of webshells, proxy utilities, and file modifications to allow credential harvesting. Once UTA0178 had access into the network via the ICS VPN appliance, their general approach was to pivot from system to system using compromised credentials. They would then further compromise credentials of users on any new system that was breached, and use these credentials to log into additional systems via RDP. Volexity observed the attacker obtaining credentials in a variety of ways.
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- Mandiant
- UNC5221
- Other names
- UTA0178, ARMORY CASTLE, UNC5221, UTA0178
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
- Germany
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- BRICKSTORM
- CloudDuke
- Cyber Eye RAT
- CyberGate
- GLASSTOKEN
- LIGHTWIRE
- PySoxy
- THINSPOOL
- WARPWIRE
- WIREFIRE
- Xploit
- ZIPLINE
Sources
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de