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Velvet Ant is a China-linked cyber espionage threat actor associated with long-duration intrusions, stealthy persistence, and abuse of trusted infrastructure and authentication components. The group has been publicly tied to Operation Highland, a campaign in which it reportedly maintained access inside a victim organization for nearly a decade, including movement from internet-facing systems into a segregated critical infrastructure environment with no direct internet connectivity. Velvet Ant’s tradecraft emphasizes persistence through modification of core Linux authentication and remote access components rather than reliance on conventional malware alone. Observed techniques include backdooring PAM modules and trojanizing OpenSSH components to enable authentication bypass, credential theft, command logging, and long-term access that can survive password resets and session termination. The actor has also used SSH key persistence, reverse shells, SOCKS proxying, and web-server-based bridging to move laterally and tunnel traffic into isolated network segments. Multiple distinct PAM backdoor variants have been identified, indicating sustained development effort and operational resourcing. The group is known for blending malicious activity into normal administrative and system behavior. Reported methods include process masquerading, use of legitimate services, disabling or modifying security tools, and code injection into benign processes. Velvet Ant has also been associated with exploitation of cloud services, OAuth tokens, and other legitimate platforms as part of broader China-nexus intrusion trends. In Windows environments, reporting has noted use of a malicious DLL masquerading as a legitimate component and process injection via multiple service host processes. Velvet Ant has additionally been linked to abuse of network infrastructure and edge devices, including prior activity involving F5 BIG-IP appliances and exploitation of Cisco NX-OS vulnerability CVE-2024-20399 to deploy the VELVETSHELL backdoor on Nexus switches. This pattern is consistent with an operational preference for hiding within trusted infrastructure layers that are less frequently scrutinized than endpoint malware. Overall, Velvet Ant is characterized as a patient, well-resourced Chinese espionage actor focused on stealth, persistence, credential access, and long-term intelligence collection, particularly in sensitive enterprise and critical infrastructure environments.
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.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
49 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
9 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
4 additional families tracked in Mallory.
8 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 8 of them exploited in the wild.
The same actor had earlier abused F5 BIG-IP appliances. It also exploited CVE-2024-20399, a Cisco NX-OS zero-day, to plant the VELVETSHELL backdoor on Nexus switches.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
The following analytic detects attempts to exploit CVE-2022-26134, an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence... This activity is significant as it allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on the Confluence server without authentication, potentially leading to full system compromise.
3 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Associated with exploiting cloud environments, OAuth tokens, and legitimate services.
Mentioned only as an annotated threat actor associated with the ATT&CK technique Process Injection (T1055) in a Splunk detection entry; no campaign or activity is described.
Mentioned only as an annotation/tag associated with the ATT&CK technique Process Injection (T1055); no campaign or activity by this group is described in the content.
Mentioned only in an annotation/list associated with the detection content; no actor-specific activity is described in this reference.
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.