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Axiom, also known as Group 72, is a longstanding, China-linked cyberespionage group associated with Operation SMN. It is sophisticated and well funded, with an established software development methodology. Its targeting focuses on high-profile organizations possessing valuable intellectual property in manufacturing, industrial, aerospace, defense, and media sectors, predominantly in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Axiom obtains initial access through watering-hole attacks, spear-phishing, SQL injection, and exploitation of vulnerable applications. Its campaigns have used CVE-2014-0322, CVE-2012-4792, CVE-2012-1889, and CVE-2013-3893. The group deploys multiple remote-access trojan families, including Gh0st RAT, Poison Ivy, HydraQ/9002 RAT, HiKit, ZxShell, DeputyDog, Derusbi, and PlugX, to steal data and credentials and support operations within compromised networks. It performs credential dumping, uses RDP, and leverages compromised hosts as staging points for lateral movement. Its operational infrastructure includes virtual private servers. Shared tooling and infrastructure with other threat groups do not establish a confirmed organizational relationship or subgroup structure.
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.
56 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
15 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
10 additional families tracked in Mallory.
12 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 12 of them exploited in the wild.
We have also observed them using SQL injection as part of their attacks, and exploits based on CVE-2012-1889 and CVE-2013-3893.
The group is associated with the initial attack campaigns utilising exploits for the following vulnerabilities CVE-2014-0322 and CVE-2012-4792.
We have also observed them using SQL injection as part of their attacks, and exploits based on CVE-2012-1889 and CVE-2013-3893.
The group is associated with the initial attack campaigns utilising exploits for the following vulnerabilities CVE-2014-0322 and CVE-2012-4792.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
7 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
25 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.
Suspected of conducting the 2017 CCleaner software supply-chain compromise for selective industrial espionage. Attackers allegedly used reused TeamViewer credentials, RDP lateral movement, ShadowPad, a trojanized and validly signed CCleaner binary carrying Floxif, victim reconnaissance, and selective second-stage payload delivery to targeted organizations.
Mentioned only in ATT&CK annotation context; no actor-specific activity is discussed.
Listed as an associated threat actor in the detection annotation for a Linux usermod root UID set analytic; no specific campaign or activity is described in this reference.
Listed as an associated threat actor in detection annotations for Ghostscript exploitation; no specific campaign activity is described in this reference.
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.