- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- China(high confidence)
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2018
- Sources
- 6 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0362 · unfading-sea-haze
What it is
Unfading Sea Haze is a threat actor focused on espionage, targeting government and military organizations in the South China Sea region since 2018. They employ spear-phishing emails with malicious attachments to gain initial access, followed by the deployment of custom malware such as Gh0st RAT variants and SharpJSHandler. The group utilizes scheduled tasks and manipulates local administrator accounts for persistence, while also incorporating Remote Monitoring and Management tools into their attacks. Unfading Sea Haze demonstrates a sophisticated and patient approach, remaining undetected for years and showing adaptability through evolving exfiltration tactics and malware arsenal.
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
- Sectors
- Defense, Government
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- China Chopper
- DustyExfilTool
- EtherealGh0st
- FluffyGh0st
- Gh0st RAT
- InsidiousGh0st
- Ps2dllLoader
- Remote Utilities
- RemoteCMD
- RemotePC
- SerialPktdoor
- SharpBot
- SharpEye
- SharpJSHandler
- SharpZulip
- SilentGh0st
- Stubbedoor
- TranslucentGh0st
- gh0st
- xkeylog
Sources
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de