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BLUELIGHT is a Windows backdoor associated with the North Korean espionage actor APT37, also known as ScarCruft, Reaper, InkySquid, and Vedalia. It has been observed in targeted intrusion activity against South Korean victims and has been linked to exploit-driven campaigns, including browser-exploit chains, as well as broader APT37 operations. BLUELIGHT has also been described as an earlier malware lineage later succeeded by Goldbackdoor, and it has served as an intermediate or second-stage implant in multistage ScarCruft infections that ultimately deployed more advanced payloads such as Dolphin.
BLUELIGHT supports host profiling and victim reconnaissance by collecting the current username, local time, IP information, process filenames, security identifier authority level, and installed antivirus products. It also includes credential-theft functionality focused on passwords stored in web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Naver Whale. In addition, BLUELIGHT can capture screenshots on a recurring schedule, beginning with frequent captures shortly after command-and-control initialization and then continuing at longer intervals.
The malware exfiltrates collected information over its command-and-control channel and has been reported to use cloud services, including Microsoft Graph and OneDrive, as command-and-control infrastructure in some variants, reflecting APT37’s broader use of legitimate cloud platforms to blend malicious traffic with normal enterprise activity. BLUELIGHT also includes self-removal capability, allowing it to uninstall itself from compromised systems. Its observed functionality and operational context are consistent with espionage-oriented collection against strategically relevant targets.
Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
2 CVEs Mallory has correlated with this family across public research and vendor advisories. Each row links to the full Mallory page for that vulnerability.
These malicious documents exploited an Internet Explorer 0-day vulnerability in the JScript engine, CVE-2022-41128. The vulnerability resides within “jscript9.dll”, the JavaScript engine of Internet Explorer, and can be exploited to execute arbitrary code when rendering an attacker-controlled website.
The backdoor was used as the final payload of a multistage attack in early 2021, involving a watering-hole attack on a South Korean online newspaper, an Internet Explorer exploit, and another ScarCruft backdoor, named BLUELIGHT. | ScarCruft exploits CVE-2020-1380 to compromise victims.
4 distinct threat actors attributed by public researchers. Open in Mallory to see the full evidence chain and overlapping campaigns.
North Korean BLUELIGHT Special: InkySquid Deploys RokRAT ... North Korean APT37 / InkySquid Infects Victims Using Browser Exploits BLUELIGHT
The first known usage was by the North Korea-linked Vedalia espionage group (aka APT37), which developed Bluelight, a second-stage payload that could communicate with several different cloud services for C&C purposes.
BLUELIGHT can harvest cookies from Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, and Naver Whale browsers.
...and finally to BLUELIGHT and FOOTWINE for full surveillance.
22 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
The content repeatedly describes adversaries using Base64, XOR, RC4, AES, hexadecimal encoding, string encryption, code flattening, custom crypters, and other obfuscation methods to hide payloads, strings, configuration data, URLs, and scripts.
Agent Tesla can gather credentials from a number of browsers... APT33 has used a variety of publicly available tools like LaZagne to gather credentials... TrickBot can obtain passwords stored in files from web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge... SELECT action_url, username_value, password_value FROM logins; CryptUnprotectData
Agent Tesla can gather credentials from a number of browsers... APT3 has used tools to dump passwords from browsers... APT41 used BrowserGhost, a tool designed to obtain credentials from browsers, to retrieve information from password stores... TrickBot can obtain passwords stored in files from web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge
AdFind can extract subnet information from Active Directory; actors used ipconfig /all, netsh.exe, ifconfig, arp, route, nbtstat, and related APIs/commands to gather IP, MAC, DNS, DHCP, gateway, proxy, routing, ARP, and adapter information.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting the victim username, identifying logged-in users, running whoami, query user, quser, or similar commands to determine the current user or user sessions.
Tasklist can be used to discover processes running on a system. Numerous malware families and threat groups are described as listing running processes, collecting PIDs, checking for specific process names, or enumerating loaded modules.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting OS version, computer name, architecture, CPU, memory, disk, language, and other host details; examples include use of commands such as ver, systeminfo, hostname, uname -m, sw_vers -productVersion, and fsutil.
The content is a long ATT&CK-style listing of groups and malware that can 'list files and directories,' 'search for files,' 'enumerate drives,' 'gather file metadata,' or 'browse file systems' on compromised hosts.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting the current date, time, or time zone from victim systems, including examples such as "The net time command can be used... to determine the local or remote system time" and commands like "net time \\hostname" and "w32tm /tz".
Additionally it reports twice to the C2 server: before launching the exploit and after the exploit succeeds.
The content is a long ATT&CK-style listing showing numerous malware families and threat groups that 'use HTTP,' 'use HTTPS,' 'HTTP POST requests,' 'HTTP GET requests,' or 'HTTP/S' for command and control communications. | Specific implementations mentioned include 'HTTP POST requests,' 'HTTP GET requests,' 'custom HTTP cookies,' 'Cookie HTTP header,' 'HTTP Upgrade request' for WebSocket initiation, and use of APIs such as 'Microsoft Graph API' or 'Dropbox HTTP API' for C2.
1 indicator attributed across vendor reports, sandbox runs, and researcher write-ups. Full values are available in Mallory.
File hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) from samples and reports.
54 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Named malware/tool or campaign component associated with InkySquid/APT37 activity and browser-exploit-driven infections.
Previously attributed backdoor that uses legitimate cloud services (Google Drive, OneDrive) as part of its operations (e.g., for C2 or data exchange).
Cloud-C2 backdoor that abuses legitimate cloud storage providers (e.g., Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, pCloud, BackBlaze) to execute commands, enumerate files, transfer payloads/files, and self-remove.
A late-stage surveillance component used alongside FOOTWINE to enable monitoring of compromised systems (details not further described in the content).
Match every observed IP, domain, and hash against your live telemetry.
Named campaigns wielding this family, with evidence pinned to each claim.
CVEs this family uses for access and lateral movement.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Every documented technique, ranked by evidence weight.
Reddit, Mastodon, and CTI community discussion around this family.