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Rancor is a suspected Chinese-linked cyber-espionage threat group active since at least 2017. It has targeted government and government-related entities in Southeast Asia, including organizations in Singapore and Cambodia. Rancor operations rely heavily on spearphishing, using spoofed government-themed emails and decoy documents to induce recipients to enable macros or open weaponized attachments. Observed delivery mechanisms include malicious Microsoft Office documents, Visual Basic and JavaScript payloads, and RTF documents exploiting Microsoft Equation Editor vulnerabilities, including CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, and CVE-2018-0802. Rancor has used document metadata to conceal commands, scheduled tasks for persistence, and native Windows utilities including msiexec, certutil, cmd.exe, and schtasks. It has downloaded and executed additional payloads through HTTP, used PowerShell-based backdoors for command execution and collection, and returned command results and victim-system information to command-and-control infrastructure. Later activity incorporated DLL side-loading through legitimate antivirus executables and deployed modular loader components; one observed infection chain delivered Cobalt Strike Beacon. The group has also used HTTP for command-and-control communications. Chinese-language document artifacts, operational timing, RoyalRoad-style RTF weaponization, and campaign timing have supported assessments of a China nexus, although this attribution is less definitive than the group’s observed espionage activity and Southeast Asian targeting.
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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.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
30 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
6 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
1 additional family tracked in Mallory.
4 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 4 of them exploited in the wild.
This detection identifies instances where Windows Explorer.exe spawns PowerShell or cmd.exe processes, particularly focusing on executions initiated by LNK files. This behavior is associated with the ZDI-CAN-25373 Windows shortcut zero-day vulnerability, where specially crafted LNK files are used to trigger malicious code execution through cmd.exe or powershell.exe. This technique has been actively exploited by multiple APT groups in targeted attacks through both HTTP and SMB delivery methods.
RoyalRoad is a tool that generates weaponized RTF documents that exploit the following vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Equation Editor: CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2018-0802.
RoyalRoad is a tool that generates weaponized RTF documents that exploit the following vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Equation Editor: CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2018-0802.
RoyalRoad is a tool that generates weaponized RTF documents that exploit the following vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Equation Editor: CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798 and CVE-2018-0802.
123 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Referenced only as an annotated actor associated with the detection technique.
Listed in the detection annotation metadata.
Listed only as an annotation associated with the detection.
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.