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Rancor is an espionage-focused threat group active since at least 2017, with documented operations against targets in Singapore and Cambodia and government entities in Southeast Asia. Its campaigns use spearphishing emails impersonating government departments, embassies, and related organizations, accompanied by politically themed decoy documents such as official correspondence, instructions, press releases, and surveys. Rancor obtains initial access through malicious Microsoft Office attachments, including macro-enabled documents and weaponized RTF documents exploiting Microsoft Equation Editor vulnerabilities. It has used the RoyalRoad RTF weaponizer. Its execution chains employ VBA macros, VBScript, JavaScript, PowerShell, and the Windows command shell, sometimes concealing execution commands in document metadata. The group establishes persistence through Windows scheduled tasks and abuses Windows Installer to download and execute malicious installation packages over HTTP. It also uses native Windows utilities to retrieve additional malware. Rancor has employed DLL side-loading through legitimate Avast and Bitdefender executables to load malicious components. Its payloads include PowerShell backdoors, DLL loaders, and Cobalt Strike Beacon. Backdoors retrieve commands, execute them on compromised systems, and transmit execution results and victim-system information to command-and-control infrastructure. HTTP-based communications and traffic resembling legitimate software updates help conceal its activity. A government-targeting campaign observed from December 2018 through June 2019 demonstrated repeated changes to delivery mechanisms, loaders, persistence, and second-stage payloads.
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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.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
28 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
6 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
1 additional family tracked in Mallory.
4 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 4 of them exploited in the wild.
This detection identifies instances where Windows Explorer.exe spawns PowerShell or cmd.exe processes, particularly focusing on executions initiated by LNK files. This behavior is associated with the ZDI-CAN-25373 Windows shortcut zero-day vulnerability, where specially crafted LNK files are used to trigger malicious code execution through cmd.exe or powershell.exe. This technique has been actively exploited by multiple APT groups in targeted attacks through both HTTP and SMB delivery methods.
RoyalRoad is a tool that generates weaponized RTF documents that exploit the following vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Equation Editor: CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2018-0802.
RoyalRoad is a tool that generates weaponized RTF documents that exploit the following vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Equation Editor: CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2018-0802.
RoyalRoad is a tool that generates weaponized RTF documents that exploit the following vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Equation Editor: CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2018-0802.
123 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Referenced only as an annotated actor associated with the detection technique.
Listed in the detection annotation metadata.
Listed only as an annotation associated with the detection.
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.