Loading threat actor…
APT32, widely known as OceanLotus, is a Vietnam-linked, state-sponsored cyberespionage actor targeting corporate organizations and other victims internationally. Its aliases include APT-C-00, ATK17, BISMUTH, Canvas Cyclone, Cobalt Kitty, Lotus Bane, Ocean Buffalo, POND LOACH, SeaLotus, SectorF01, and TIN WOODLAWN. Its targeting includes Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Germany, Cambodia, Laos, and the United States, with additional activity across Asia and other regions. APT32 uses spearphishing emails containing malicious links or executable attachments disguised as documents and spreadsheets. Its operations combine Cobalt Strike, Mimikatz, customized Windows Credential Dumper variants, and other publicly available tools. It harvests credentials, enumerates domain controllers and remote systems using native Windows utilities, and moves laterally through pass-the-hash authentication and administrative accounts before deploying additional tools. The group has exploited CVE-2016-7255 for privilege escalation. Persistence mechanisms include web shells on compromised websites, scheduled tasks, and newly created or modified Windows services, including services configured to load PowerShell scripts. Defense-evasion techniques include disguising Cobalt Strike payloads as legitimate installers, injecting beacons into legitimate Windows processes, and obfuscating scripts and payloads with Invoke-Obfuscation, Base64, and Dont-Kill-My-Cat. Its tooling also includes a macOS backdoor with an encrypted network-exfiltration component.
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.
78 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
38 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
33 additional families tracked in Mallory.
6 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 6 of them exploited in the wild.
APT32 has used CVE-2016-7255 to escalate privileges.
...has exploited Office vulnerabilities such as CVE-2017-11882...
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.
"A critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-55182 and dubbed React2Shell, exists within the React Server Components (RSC) architecture, allowing unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code..."
The following analytic detects when su runs from a page-cache-corrupted binary... This activity is significant because it indicates a possible privilege escalation attempt, allowing a user to gain root access... CVE CVE-2026-31431 ... References ... copy-fail-CVE-2026-31431
1 more CVE tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
749 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.
Listed in the detection's technique annotations; the content does not attribute ShieldCrash exploitation to this group.
Annotation-only mention; no actor-specific operation or behavior is described.
Listed as an annotation to a renamed-Python-binary detection; no actor-specific campaign or behavior is described.
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.