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TA428, also known as Colourful Panda and BRONZE DUDLEY, is a Chinese state-linked advanced persistent threat group conducting cyberespionage against government, defense, aviation, industrial, and research organizations. Its established targets include Mongolia and Russia, with additional operations against organizations in Belarus, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. Its objectives include stealing confidential documents and account information and maintaining access to sensitive enterprise networks. The group conducted Operation LagTime IT, observed from at least March 2019, against East Asian government organizations. Initial access commonly involves tailored spearphishing attachments generated with the Royal Road RTF weaponizer. These documents exploit Microsoft Equation Editor vulnerabilities, including CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2017-11882, to deploy backdoors. TA428's malware arsenal includes Poison Ivy, Cotx RAT, Tmanger, nccTrojan, PortDoor, DNSep, Logtu, and CotSam; SManager, also known as PhantomNet, has also been attributed to the group. Implant capabilities include remote command execution, host discovery, file transfer, screen capture, and keylogging. TA428 combines custom malware with publicly available reconnaissance, exploitation, and credential-access tools. It performs network and vulnerability scanning, steals Outlook and Windows credentials, extracts Active Directory password hashes, and exploits MS17-010 for lateral movement. Other observed movement techniques include WMI-based remote execution, scheduled tasks, and abuse of stolen domain credentials. Persistence mechanisms include Microsoft Word add-ins, Windows services, registry autorun entries, and forged Kerberos Golden Tickets. Its defense-evasion techniques include DLL side-loading, process hollowing, encrypted payloads and communications, dynamic API resolution, and modification of endpoint protection settings. TA428 has deployed multiple backdoors within individual environments to preserve redundant access channels. Sensitive files are collected into password-protected archives and exfiltrated through staged command-and-control infrastructure. Shared tools and infrastructure overlap with other Chinese-linked groups, but these overlaps do not establish that those groups are TA428 aliases or subgroups.
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.
47 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
30 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
25 additional families tracked in Mallory.
4 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 4 of them exploited in the wild.
This RTF file contains malicious code for exploiting CVE-2018-0798 and an object called ‘8.t’. The inclusion of these objects suggests that it was created using the Royal Road RTF Weaponizer.
‘s.exe’ contains an executable file called ‘s.exe’. This is a checker to investigate whether it can be compromised by exploiting MS17-010 against the host passed as an argument... ‘w.exe’ is a tool that actually exploits MS17-010.
Phishing emails contain Microsoft Word documents with embedded malicious code that exploits the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability. The malicious code embedded in the document drops PortDoor malware.
Royal Road is a tool that generates RTF files that exploit the Microsoft Office Equation Editor vulnerabilities (CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, CVE-2018-0802).
265 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 Chinese threat actor previously attributed with PhantomNet malware that overlaps with tooling seen in Cluster Alpha.
Chinese-linked espionage actor referenced due to attribution overlaps with Cluster Alpha malware including PhantomNet/DOWNTOWN and possible ties to Worok.
Referenced as a group previously associated with deploying ValleyRAT and targeting government, technology, defense, and critical infrastructure entities in China; not directly attributed as the actor behind this specific campaign.
Previously assessed as a possible user of EAGERBEE in attacks targeting Japanese organizations.
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.