GINC-APT-0009 · State

Volt Typhoon

Also Redfly, UAT-5918, UAT-7237, BRONZE SILHOUETTE, CL-STA-1062, DazedToad and 7 other names.

Category
State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
Origin
China(high confidence)contested
Sponsor
State-sponsored
Motivation
Information theft and espionage
Seen
2020–2026
Status
Active
ATT&CK
G1017 · 81 techniques
Sources
14 sources carry it
Identifier
GINC-APT-0009 · volt-typhoon

What it is

Volt Typhoon is a People's Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored actor that has been active since at least 2021, primarily targeting critical infrastructure organizations in the US and its territories including Guam. Volt Typhoon's targeting and pattern of behavior have been assessed as pre-positioning to enable lateral movement to operational technology (OT) assets for potential destructive or disruptive attacks. Volt Typhoon has emphasized stealth in operations using web shells, living-off-the-land (LOTL) binaries, hands on keyboard activities, and stolen credentials.. The group has leveraged compromised SOHO routers to proxy command and control traffic and obscure its infrastructure, activity associated with the KV botnet..

Reporting indicates a separate initial access cluster, SYLVANITE, has been observed exploiting internet-facing edge devices and transferring access to Volt Typhoon, also tracked as VOLTZITE, for follow-on operations.

Names

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

Cisco Talos
UAT-5918, UAT-7237
CrowdStrike
Vanguard Panda
Mandiant
UNC3236
Microsoft
DEV-0391, Storm-0391
MITRE ATT&CK
G1017
Secureworks
BRONZE SILHOUETTE
Other names
Redfly, CL-STA-1062, DazedToad, Insidious Taurus, Voltzite

Attribution

Each attribution is a claim: who makes it, and to whom. Western and Eastern sources are kept apart, as they often disagree.

Chinese and Russian sources

  • CVERC · 2024-04Three CVERC reports in 2024 rejected the Five Eyes attribution of Volt Typhoon to Chinese state actors. Recorded here as a contested attribution, not as a change to the primary attribution.disputed: CVERC says Volt Typhoon is a criminal ransomware group and a US disinformation construct · counter-claim

Targets

Countries
Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States
Sectors
Construction, Education, Energy, Government, Industrial, IT, Manufacturing, Maritime and Shipbuilding, Telecommunications, Transportation, Utilities

Tools

The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.

  • Archelaus Beta
  • China Chopper
  • Client Maximus
  • ClientMesh
  • Cobalt Strike
  • CrossRat
  • FRP
  • Impacket
  • JDY
  • KV
  • KV-Botnet
  • Mimikatz
  • Nbtscan
  • Net
  • Nltest
  • Ping
  • ProcDump
  • PsExec
  • Reg
  • SOUNDBITE
  • SparrowDoor
  • Systeminfo
  • Tasklist
  • UNITEDRAKE
  • VersaMem
  • Wevtutil
  • Xploit
  • certutil
  • cmd
  • ipconfig
  • netsh
  • netstat

Sources