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Andariel is a North Korean state-sponsored cyberespionage group linked to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) 3rd Bureau and widely assessed to operate within the broader Lazarus ecosystem. Mandiant tracks the actor as APT45, elevating the designation from Andariel as the group expanded from primarily espionage activity into ransomware operations. Other reported aliases include Onyx Sleet, Plutonium, Silent Chollima, Black Chollima, Stonefly, DarkSeoul, and Jumpy Pisces. Andariel has historically concentrated on South Korean targets, including public institutions, defense- and nuclear-related organizations, universities, and organizations in technology, logistics, manufacturing, and financial-adjacent environments. It has also conducted cyberespionage against European public/legal-sector entities. The group has repeatedly targeted enterprise software and has sought access to sensitive government and anti-money-laundering-related information. The actor uses spearphishing attachments and malicious documents requiring macro enablement, as well as compromise of vulnerable websites and software, for initial access. Its operations employ multi-stage downloaders and remote-access malware, including TigerRAT, TigerDownloader, NukeSped, StarshellRAT, JelusRAT, and GopherRAT. Observed post-compromise activity includes process and system discovery, command execution, file collection and transfer, screen capture, keylogging, SOCKS tunneling, port forwarding, credential theft, and deployment of additional tools and payloads. Andariel employs persistence mechanisms including startup execution and registry-based techniques, while using privilege-escalation utilities and bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver techniques to disable antivirus and endpoint-detection products. It has used anti-analysis measures, in-memory payload loading, encrypted command-and-control communications, self-deletion, and timestomping to impede detection and forensic analysis. In addition to espionage, the group has deployed ransomware, including Maui, reflecting an operational overlap between DPRK intelligence collection and revenue-generating activity.
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.
62 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
61 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
56 additional families tracked in Mallory.
3 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 3 of them exploited in the wild.
Andariel 그룹은 취약한 버전의 VMware Horizon 제품을 사용하는 국내 기업을 대상으로 Log4Shell 취약점 공격을 수행해 TigerRat을 설치한 사례도 존재한다.
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.
"The other victim operated a vulnerable Weblogic server. According to our telemetry, the actor compromised this server via the CVE-2017-10271 exploit."
260 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.
North Korean actor that expanded from espionage into ransomware deployment against healthcare and energy targets.
North Korean-linked group described as targeting defense and nuclear-related organizations; mentioned as having been dismantled in 2024.
A destructive threat actor cluster linked in the report to the Sony Pictures intrusion and earlier destructive attacks dating back to at least 2009, and described as still active primarily targeting South Korean organizations across multiple sectors.
Mentioned for tradecraft similarity only, specifically abuse of South Korean ERP solutions to distribute malware. Not presented as the primary actor in this report.
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.