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APT40, also known as Leviathan, is a Chinese government-backed cyberespionage actor targeting organizations including U.S. engineering and maritime industries. Other aliases include BRONZE MOHAWK, Feverdream, Gadolinium, Gingham Typhoon, JJDoor, Kryptonite Panda, MUDCARP, Red Ladon, TEMP.Jumper, and TEMP.Periscope. The group has operated the front company Hainan Xiandun, which recruited recent English-language graduates for espionage-related work without disclosing the company's true activities. APT40 gains initial access through spearphishing links and malicious document attachments, compromised valid accounts, and external remote services such as VPNs. Its phishing operations use lookalike domains, stolen branding, and compromised email accounts to impersonate trusted senders and evade detection. The group has also targeted internet-facing routers and VPN infrastructure and uses web shells to establish footholds and maintain persistent access. Its post-compromise activities include password-hash dumping with ProcDump and Windows Credential Editor, theft of RDP credentials, and lateral movement through RDP. Its tooling includes the BADFLICK backdoor for reverse-shell access and SeDll for decrypting and executing JavaScript backdoors. It uses JavaScript and XML-hosted JavaScript Scriptlets for execution, Base64 encoding and gzip compression for obfuscation, and multi-hop proxies to conceal the origin of malicious traffic. In late August 2023, APT40 launched a phishing campaign targeting Papua New Guinea that exploited CVE-2023-38831 in WinRAR. The infection chain deployed ISLANDSTAGER and BOXRAT, established registry-based persistence, and used the Dropbox API for command and control.
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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.
53 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
39 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
34 additional families tracked in Mallory.
16 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 16 of them exploited in the wild.
...used exploits for... Word (CVE-2017-0199)...
APT40 leverages exploits in their phishing operations, often weaponizing vulnerabilities within days of their disclosure. Observed vulnerabilities include: CVE-2012-0158 CVE-2017-0199 CVE-2017-8759 CVE-2017-11882
APT40 leverages exploits in their phishing operations, often weaponizing vulnerabilities within days of their disclosure. Observed vulnerabilities include: CVE-2012-0158 CVE-2017-0199 CVE-2017-8759 CVE-2017-11882
The threat group KRYPTONITE PANDA exploited a critical Microsoft Office vulnerability (CVE-2018-0802) a month before its disclosure to the vendor by Qihoo 360, which initially discovered the flaw.
CVE-2023-38831 is a vulnerability that enables malicious actors to execute arbitrary code when a user tries to access a harmless file contained within a ZIP archive.
11 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
181 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.
Chinese state-sponsored actor cited for targeting biomedical, healthcare, and virus-research organizations in the context of nation-state espionage.
Listed in the detection's technique annotations; the content does not attribute ShieldCrash exploitation to this group.
Leviathan is listed in the Annotations section of the Windows AD Computer SPN Modified By User Account detection.
Listed only in technique annotations. The content does not attribute ResetNightmare exploitation or a specific campaign to this group.
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.