- 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.
Western sources
- ETDA / ThaiCERTChina
- MISP Galaxy (CFR tagging)China
- MicrosoftChina
- ThreatActor.info (Malpedia et al.)China · high
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
- MITRE ATT&CK attack.mitre.org
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de