GINC-APT-0992 · Targeted, sponsor unknown

Team46

Also TaxOff.

Category
Targeted, sponsor unknown · Targeted intrusions with no sponsor attributed.
Origin
Unknown
Sources
3 sources carry it
Identifier
GINC-APT-0992 · team46

What it is

Team46 is a sophisticated APT group active since at least late 2024, targeting Russian government, academic, and media organizations through spearphishing emails disguised as forum invitations or service notifications. They exploit zero-day vulnerabilities like CVE-2025-2783 in Google Chrome (March 2025, Operation ForumTroll) and CVE-2024-6473 in Yandex Browser, deploying multi-stage loaders (e.g., winsta.dll, donut shellcode) that decrypt payloads using machine-specific keys like firmware UUID for environmental guardrails. Key malware includes the Trinper backdoor for keylogging, clipboard theft, file/process discovery, and encrypted C2 exfiltration over HTTPS with domain fronting, alongside auxiliary .NET tools (dirlist.exe, ProcessList.exe) and variants using Cobalt Strike or Dante backdoor; the group employs obfuscation, AMSI bypasses, debugger evasion, and self-deletion for persistence and stealth. Positive Technologies attributes TaxOff operations to Team46 based on identical PowerShell patterns, loaders, and hyphenated CDN-mimicking infrastructure (e.g., ms-appdata-*.global.ssl.fastly.net).

Names

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

Other names
TaxOff

Tools

The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.

  • Backdoor.Oldrea
  • Chrome Remote Desktop
  • Cobalt Strike
  • POWERSOURCE
  • POWERSTATS
  • Power Loader
  • PowerDuke
  • PowerRAT
  • Xploit

Sources

  • Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de