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Andariel is a North Korean state-linked cyberespionage and offensive operations group associated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau and the broader Lazarus ecosystem. It is also tracked as APT45, Onyx Sleet (formerly Plutonium), Silent Chollima, Stonefly, Jumpy Pisces, and TDrop2; DarkSeoul is another designation associated with its activity. Attacks against South Korea were identified as early as 2008. Its operations combine intelligence collection, particularly information relevant to national security, with financially motivated intrusions and ransomware activity. The group's principal targets are in South Korea, the United States, and India. Targeted organizations include military entities, defense contractors, government and political organizations, engineering and manufacturing businesses, shipbuilders, technology companies, telecommunications providers, energy organizations, universities, logistics companies, construction businesses, and gambling operators. In August 2024, it attacked at least three US-based organizations using backdoors, credential-theft tools, keyloggers, and tunneling utilities. Andariel uses spearphishing, watering holes, supply-chain compromise, attacks against poorly secured database servers, and exploitation of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Its exploitation history includes Log4Shell and TeamCity CVE-2023-42793. It combines custom malware with publicly available remote-access trojans, legitimate remote-management software, and offensive security tools. Associated malware includes Dtrack, also known as Preft and Valefor, NukeSped, TigerRAT, Dora RAT, SmallTiger, LightHand, and ValidAlpha. Supporting tools include Mimikatz, Sliver, network scanners, and reverse-proxy utilities. Its operations feature remote command execution, credential collection, keylogging, reconnaissance, and concealed command-and-control communications, including the use of misleading certificates and encrypted malware strings. Andariel has used Maui ransomware and deployed Play ransomware in 2024. The precise organizational relationship between Andariel and Play remains unresolved. Andariel-associated DarkSeoul activity has also shared tooling and maintained communications with the separate North Korean ransomware group HolyGhost.
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.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
55 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
66 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
61 additional families tracked in Mallory.
6 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 6 of them exploited in the wild.
The report notes that Andariel previously exploited disclosed vulnerabilities such as Log4Shell and used such vulnerabilities to install malware.
Apache ActiveMQ vulnerability (CVE-2023-46604) has continued to be exploited by various threat actors. This post will cover the recent additional attacks that installed Ladon, NetCat, AnyDesk, and z0Miner.
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.
The report states that the CVE-2015-6585 HWPX vulnerability "has been used to plant at least three variants of Destover" and identifies Duuzer, e4004c1f, and BasicHwp as payloads delivered through documents exploiting it.
"The other victim operated a vulnerable Weblogic server. According to our telemetry, the actor compromised this server via the CVE-2017-10271 exploit."
1 more CVE tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
505 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.
North Korean threat actor active since at least 2009, linked to the Reconnaissance General Bureau and reportedly an offshoot of Lazarus. Traditionally focused on espionage, it has increasingly conducted financially motivated and extortion activity. In August 2024, it targeted at least three US organizations with no obvious intelligence value, possibly in preparation for ransomware attacks; ransomware deployment was not confirmed. Preft, described as exclusively used by the group, supported attribution.
Assessed as likely operating near Sinuiju, North Korea; mentioned only as context for the article's discussion of DPRK operational return channels.
A Bluesky post links to S2W's "Ransomware Landscape in H1 2026: Statistics and Key Issues" and includes the hashtag #Andariel.
Listed in the detection annotation metadata.
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.