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ChessMaster is a cyberespionage operation targeting organizations in Japan, including academic institutions, technology enterprises, media organizations, managed service providers, and government agencies. Its name derives from chess, checkers, and draughts references embedded in the resources of its principal backdoor, ChChes. ChessMaster uses spear-phishing emails with decoy documents, malicious shortcuts, PowerShell scripts, and self-extracting archives to deliver malware. Its infection chains include reflective in-memory loading of ChChes, DLL hijacking, and code injection into legitimate processes. It has also exploited CVE-2017-8759, a Microsoft .NET Framework remote-code-execution vulnerability. ChChes employs multiple runtime packers, layered XOR and AES encryption, and encrypted command-and-control communications to hinder detection and analysis. Some variants use the victim system's Security Identifier as an encryption key and conceal decryption material and payload data in the registry. Additional tooling includes TinyX, a reduced-functionality PlugX variant, and RedLeaves, deployed as a second-stage backdoor for lateral movement. ChessMaster modifies and abuses legitimate browser and email password-recovery utilities to steal credentials and facilitate further compromise within victim networks. Its RedLeaves tooling has used dynamic DNS and free DNS services for infrastructure. ChessMaster shares targeting, attack-chain characteristics, specialized packers, and command-and-control infrastructure with APT10, also known as menuPass. These operational overlaps do not establish ChessMaster as a confirmed alias of APT10.
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.
15 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
4 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
2 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 2 of them exploited in the wild.
The second, which ran from September 20 to 21, used an exploit for CVE-2017-8759 (patched last September), a code injection/remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s .NET Framework. The vulnerability was used to retrieve and execute Cobalt Strike from a remote server they controlled.
While ChessMaster still uses the previous exploit, it also added more methods to its arsenal: one exploits another vulnerability, CVE-2017-11882 (patched in November 2017), which was also exploited to deliver illegal versions of the Loki infostealer.
22 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.
A cyberespionage group mentioned as another actor using CVE-2017-8759. It is not identified as participating in Cobalt’s campaigns.
Cyberespionage campaign targeting organizations in Japan using spear-phishing emails with decoy documents, the ChChes backdoor, additional second-stage payloads, credential dumping tools, and lateral movement.
Mentioned as an example of a threat actor using dynamic DNS providers for infrastructure.
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.