Loading threat actor…
Unfading Sea Haze is a long-running espionage-focused threat actor assessed to be China-aligned, with activity traced to at least 2018. The group has primarily targeted government and military organizations in countries around the South China Sea and has shown a sustained objective of long-term clandestine access, intelligence collection, and repeated re-compromise of victim environments. Reporting links the actor’s targeting and operational patterns to Chinese state interests, although public reporting stops short of a definitive tie to a previously established named cluster in all cases. The actor is notable for persistence, stealth, and iterative tool development. Across campaigns it has used multiple Gh0st RAT-derived families and related loaders, including SilentGh0st, TranslucentGh0st, FluffyGh0st, InsidiousGh0st, EtherealGh0st, SharpJSHandler, Ps2dllLoader, and SerialPktdoor. More recent activity shows a shift toward modular malware and fileless execution, including abuse of MSBuild to execute payloads in memory from remote shares. Associated activity clusters have also been linked through tooling overlap to Hypnosis loader and likely FluffyGh0st deployments. Observed intrusion methods include spear-phishing with archive-based lures containing malicious shortcut files, DLL sideloading, scheduled-task persistence, abuse of legitimate remote management software, and likely persistence on exposed web infrastructure. The group has manipulated local administrator accounts to preserve privileged access, repeatedly regained entry after remediation, and maintained footholds through redundant access paths. Tradecraft also includes reconnaissance, credential capture, keylogging, browser-data theft, and collection of sensitive military, political, and technical information, followed by exfiltration using custom tooling and later commodity utilities and FTP-based workflows. Unfading Sea Haze has been associated with operations against high-value public-sector and defense-related targets in Southeast Asia. Tooling overlap has been reported between Unfading Sea Haze and activity clusters observed in broader China-linked espionage campaigns, including overlap between EtherealGh0st and CCoreDoor-related reporting, and between Hypnosis/FluffyGh0st activity and clusters linked to the actor. Known aliases directly supported at high confidence are limited; EtherealGh0st and FluffyGh0st are associated malware families rather than actor aliases.
Mallory correlates actor tradecraft and target patterns against your stack, your sector, and your geography. See overlap before they land.
Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
30 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
13 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
8 additional families tracked in Mallory.
13 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
7 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
China-aligned threat actor associated with FluffyGh0st RAT and overlapping with CL-STA-1049 activity.
Linked (strong evidence via tool overlap) to activity cluster CL-STA-1049, which used Hypnosis Loader (via DLL proxy sideloading) and deployed FluffyGh0st.
Chinese-nexus espionage actor associated with EtherealGh0st/CCoreDoor-style malware and targeting government and military organizations in South China Sea countries; referenced due to strong overlap with Cluster Bravo.
Chinese-nexus actor referenced due to strong malware and domain overlap between Cluster Bravo’s CCoreDoor and BitDefender’s EtherealGh0st, reportedly targeting government/military entities in South China Sea countries.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.