Loading threat actor…
UNK_LateNight is a China-linked cyberespionage activity cluster tracked by Proofpoint under a temporary designation. It was observed targeting multiple United States aerospace and defense companies beginning on September 2, 2026. Its campaigns use business-to-business correspondence, request-for-quotation messages, and defense-themed procurement inquiries as spearphishing lures that direct recipients to attacker-controlled websites hosting the BlueMoon exploit kit. BlueMoon compromises vulnerable Chromium-based browsers on Windows by chaining V8 code execution and sandbox escape with Windows kernel privilege escalation. The chain fingerprints the host to determine exploit compatibility and injects code into the browser's parent broker process to execute a payload outside the renderer sandbox. UNK_LateNight uses this access to deliver the ShadowPad backdoor through DLL sideloading, with a loader decrypting the payload using AES. The infection establishes persistence through a scheduled task. Its ShadowPad payload steals Firefox profile data, captures network traffic, unhooks network-monitoring functions, and communicates over HTTPS. UNK_LateNight is tracked separately from other espionage clusters using BlueMoon; shared exploit-kit use does not establish that those clusters are aliases or subgroups.
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.
21 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
3 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
3 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 3 of them exploited in the wild.
The first exploit targets CVE-2026-85046 in V8's optimizing compilers. When an array's element type changes during sorting, the optimized code can treat a value as the wrong type.
That DLL checks the Windows build again, then tries CVE-2026-85880. The exploit uses the ALPC communication and WNF notification mechanisms to gain kernel read/write access.
The next exploit, CVE-2026-87491, escapes the V8 sandbox. BlueMoon corrupts WebAssembly metadata and replaces compiled function code with the p1 shellcode.
25 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
18 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Used BlueMoon to deliver ShadowPad through DLL sideloading and an AES-encrypted payload. The campaign established scheduled-task persistence and used HTTPS for command-and-control communications.
Previously attributed by Proofpoint as conducting attacks involving the same chained zero-day vulnerabilities discussed in this reference.
Conducted suspected China-linked espionage against U.S. aerospace targets using BlueMoon and ShadowPad.
Suspected China-aligned espionage cluster targeting US aerospace and defense-industrial-base entities with BlueMoon, ultimately deploying ShadowPad.
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.