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Cinnamon Tempest is a China-based threat actor also known as Emperor Dragonfly, BRONZE STARLIGHT, DEV-0401, HIGHGROUND, and SLIME34. It conducts intrusions involving exploitation of internet-facing enterprise applications and deployment of ransomware. Its documented ransomware payloads include LockFile, AtomSilo, Rook, and NightSky. The group has exploited Atlassian Confluence through CVE-2021-26084 and on-premises Microsoft Exchange through CVE-2021-34473. Beginning in January 2022, it exploited the Log4j vulnerability CVE-2021-44228 in internet-facing VMware Horizon systems, with successful compromises leading to NightSky deployment. The actor uses Cobalt Strike and Meterpreter for post-exploitation activity. It has employed DLL search order hijacking to launch Cobalt Strike beacons and abused legitimate executables to side-load malicious DLLs. It has also deployed the NPC client of the open-source NPS proxy and tunneling tool alongside these frameworks, disguising the client as a Windows update component and registering it as a Windows service. This tooling provides persistent access and network tunneling and pivoting capabilities.
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.
42 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
18 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
13 additional families tracked in Mallory.
12 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 12 of them exploited in the wild.
As early as January 4, attackers started exploiting the CVE-2021-44228 vulnerability in internet-facing systems running VMware Horizon. Our investigation shows that successful intrusions in these campaigns led to the deployment of the NightSky ransomware.
DEV-0401 has previously deployed multiple ransomware families including LockFile, AtomSilo, and Rook, and has similarly exploited Internet-facing systems running Confluence (CVE-2021-26084) and on-premises Exchange servers (CVE-2021-34473).
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.
DEV-0401 has previously deployed multiple ransomware families including LockFile, AtomSilo, and Rook, and has similarly exploited Internet-facing systems running Confluence (CVE-2021-26084) and on-premises Exchange servers (CVE-2021-34473).
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.
57 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 only in technique annotations. The content does not attribute ResetNightmare exploitation or a specific campaign to this group.
Listed as an annotation to a renamed-Python-binary detection; no actor-specific campaign or behavior is described.
Referenced only as an annotated actor associated with the detection technique.
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.