- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- China(high confidence)
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2010
- Sources
- 7 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0247 · taskmasters
What it is
TaskMasters is a state-sponsored Chinese APT that has been active since at least 2010, primarily targeting industrial, energy, and government sectors in Russia and the CIS. The group has been linked to the Webdav-O Trojan, which employs techniques to bypass network defenses by connecting to legitimate services. Investigations suggest that TaskMasters may have been involved in attacks against Russian federal executive authorities in 2020, potentially alongside another Chinese group, TA428. Additionally, the group has been associated with the BackDoor.RemShell.24 malware, indicating a diverse toolkit in their operations.
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- Other names
- BlueTraveller
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
- Russia
- Sectors
- Construction, Energy, Government, IT, Manufacturing, Shipping and Logistics, Technology, Transportation
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- 404-Input-shell
- 404-Input-shell web shell
- ASPXSpy
- AtNow
- Backdoor.Oldrea
- DbxDump Utility
- Eternal Blue
- HTran
- Mimikatz
- PortScan
- ProcDump
- PsExec
- PsList
- RemShell
- RemShell Downloader
- Scheduled Tasks
- Trojan.Karagany
- Trojan.Mebromi
- gsecdump
- jsp File browser
- nbtscan
- pwdump
- reGeorg
Sources
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de