ESET APT Exercise Report This fall 2024–Q1 2025 summarizes notable actions of chosen superior persistent risk (APT) teams that have been documented by ESET researchers from October 2024 till the top of March 2025. The highlighted operations are consultant of the broader panorama of threats we investigated throughout this era, illustrating the important thing tendencies and developments, and include solely a fraction of the cybersecurity intelligence knowledge supplied to clients of ESET’s personal APT experiences.
Through the monitored interval, China-aligned risk actors continued partaking in persistent espionage campaigns with a deal with European organizations. Mustang Panda remained probably the most lively, focusing on governmental establishments and maritime transportation corporations through Korplug loaders and malicious USB drives. DigitalRecyclers continued focusing on EU governmental entities, using the KMA VPN anonymization community and deploying the RClient, HydroRShell, and GiftBox backdoors. PerplexedGoblin used its new espionage backdoor, which we named NanoSlate, towards a Central European authorities entity, whereas Webworm focused a Serbian authorities group utilizing SoftEther VPN, emphasizing the continued reputation of this device amongst China-aligned teams. Moreover, we consider {that a} ShadowPad cluster that will sporadically deploy ransomware for monetary achieve is primarily engaged in espionage. We additionally highlighted Worok’s frequent use of shared espionage toolsets resembling HDMan, PhantomNet, and Sonifake, addressing a number of inconsistent third-party attributions of campaigns involving these instruments to different teams.
Iran-aligned risk actors remained extremely lively, led by MuddyWater, which continuously leveraged distant monitoring and administration (RMM) software program in spearphishing assaults. Notably, MuddyWater collaborated carefully with Lyceum, an OilRig subgroup, to focus on an Israeli manufacturing firm. BladedFeline revisited its earlier sufferer, a telecommunications firm in Uzbekistan, coinciding with Iran’s diplomatic outreach. CyberToufan performed harmful operations, deploying a wiper assault towards a number of organizations in Israel.
North Korea-aligned risk actors have been significantly lively in financially motivated campaigns. DeceptiveDevelopment considerably broadened its focusing on, utilizing pretend job listings primarily throughout the cryptocurrency, blockchain, and finance sectors. The group employed progressive social engineering strategies, resembling ClickFix assaults and bogus GitHub situation posts, to distribute the multiplatform WeaselStore malware. The Bybit cryptocurrency theft, attributed by the FBI to TraderTraitor, concerned a supply-chain compromise of Protected{Pockets}, that prompted losses of roughly USD 1.5 billion. In the meantime, different North Korea-aligned teams noticed fluctuations of their operational tempo: In early 2025, Kimsuky and Konni returned to their typical exercise ranges after a noticeable decline on the finish of 2024, shifting their focusing on away from English-speaking suppose tanks, NGOs, and North Korea consultants to focus totally on South Korean entities and diplomatic personnel; and Andariel resurfaced, after a yr of inactivity, with a complicated assault towards a South Korean industrial software program firm.
Russia-aligned risk actors, notably Sednit and Gamaredon, maintained aggressive campaigns primarily focusing on Ukraine and EU nations. Sednit refined its exploitation of cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in webmail providers, increasing Operation RoundPress from Roundcube to incorporate Horde, MDaemon, and Zimbra. We found that the group efficiently leveraged a zero-day vulnerability in MDaemon E mail Server (CVE‑2024‑11182) towards Ukrainian corporations, whereas RomCom demonstrated superior capabilities by deploying zero-day exploits towards Mozilla Firefox (CVE‑2024‑9680) and Microsoft Home windows (CVE‑2024‑49039). All of those vulnerabilities have been reported by ESET researchers to respective distributors. Gamaredon remained probably the most prolific actor focusing on Ukraine, enhancing malware obfuscation and introducing PteroBox, a file stealer leveraging Dropbox, whereas the notorious Sandworm group intensified harmful operations towards Ukrainian vitality corporations, deploying a brand new wiper named ZEROLOT through Lively Listing Group Coverage and using RMM instruments in early compromise levels.
Lastly, notable actions by lesser-known teams included APT‑C‑60 specializing in people in Japan who’re presumably linked to North Korea, and a extremely focused phishing marketing campaign, performed by an as but unidentified risk actor, impersonating the World Financial Discussion board and election web sites, aiming to acquire delicate data from Ukrainian officers and diplomats. As well as, StealthFalcon performed espionage targeted operations in Türkiye and Pakistan.
Malicious actions described in ESET APT Exercise Report This fall 2024–Q1 2025 are detected by ESET merchandise; shared intelligence is primarily based on proprietary ESET telemetry knowledge and has been verified by ESET researchers.
