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Pacifier APT is a cyber-espionage threat cluster active from 2014 through at least May 2016, primarily associated with intrusions against Romanian institutions and additional victims in multiple other countries. The operation relied on spear-phishing emails delivering malicious Word documents and later ZIP archives containing double-extension JavaScript droppers. Lures included resumes, invitations, conference materials, official instructions, commercial offers, and urgent notices, indicating tailored social engineering for targeted compromise. Pacifier used staged malware delivery and evolved across several variants. Early activity employed macro-enabled Word documents that decrypted and launched droppers, deployed decoy documents, and installed multi-component backdoors. Later waves shifted to self-extracting archive and JavaScript-based delivery. The malware established persistence through autorun mechanisms including registry run keys, shortcut modification, and later scheduled tasks. A notable operational characteristic was extensive process injection into legitimate applications, including web browsers, Outlook, and later core Windows processes, to reduce visibility and blend malicious activity with normal user and system behavior. Core capabilities included command execution, file upload and download, directory listing, self-deletion, host identification, and encrypted command-and-control communications over HTTP and HTTPS. Multiple variants used dedicated launcher, injector, reconnaissance, communications, and backdoor modules. One branch replaced the executable backdoor with a malicious Firefox extension disguised as a language pack, providing similar remote access functions through encrypted browser-based communications. By 2016, the operation had become stealthier, emphasizing injection-only execution inside legitimate processes and minimizing suspicious standalone malware processes. Pacifier is assessed as an espionage-oriented actor based on its long-running, low-volume, targeted operations against institutional victims, its use of tailored phishing, and its modular backdoor tooling focused on covert access, persistence, and data handling rather than disruption or monetization. Known aliases include Pacifier and pacifier_apt.
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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.
31 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
2 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
142 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
3 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Cyber-espionage campaign active from 2014 to 2016 targeting Romanian institutions and other foreign targets using spear-phishing, malicious Word documents with macros, ZIP archives containing JavaScript, browser-extension malware, process injection, persistence via registry run keys and scheduled tasks, and HTTPS/HTTP C2 backdoors.
Cyber-espionage campaign active from 2014 to 2016 targeting Romanian institutions and other foreign targets using spear-phishing, malicious Word documents with macros, ZIP archives containing JavaScript, browser-extension malware, process injection, persistence via registry run keys and scheduled tasks, and HTTPS/HTTP C2 backdoors.
Cyber-espionage campaign active from 2014 to 2016 targeting Romanian institutions and other foreign targets using spear-phishing, malicious Word documents with macros, ZIP archives containing JavaScript, browser-extension malware, process injection, persistence via registry run keys and scheduled tasks, and HTTPS/HTTP C2 backdoors.
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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.
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Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.