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CL-STA-0043 is a threat activity cluster associated with intrusions against organizations in the Middle East, Africa, and the United States. It has been assessed with medium confidence as nation-state-aligned based on victimology, tradecraft, and the use of customized tooling, but no specific sponsoring state is confirmed at high confidence. The cluster overlaps with another activity set tracked as CL-STA-0002, including shared malware and common victim organizations. The cluster is linked to credential theft, covert command-and-control, and data exfiltration. Reported tooling associated with the overlapping activity includes Agent Racoon, a .NET backdoor that uses DNS for covert command-and-control and supports command execution and file transfer; Ntospy, a custom Network Provider DLL used to intercept Windows authentication events and capture credentials; and Mimilite, a reduced customized Mimikatz variant used for credential dumping. Operators used scheduled tasks for execution, staged tools in temporary directories, masqueraded binaries as legitimate software updates, and performed cleanup after operations. Observed post-compromise activity included collection of email from Microsoft Exchange via PowerShell snap-ins and exfiltration of user roaming-profile data using archived chunked transfers. The cluster’s tradecraft demonstrates defense evasion through masquerading and cleanup, persistence through scheduled task execution, credential theft through authentication interception and credential dumping, and broader post-exploitation focused on collection and exfiltration of sensitive information.
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.
12 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
4 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
2 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Previously reported Unit 42 activity cluster that overlaps with CL-STA-0002 via at least one shared Ntospy sample, two shared victim organizations, and shared TTPs (Exchange PowerShell snap-ins and a Network Provider DLL module).
Chinese cyberespionage cluster mentioned in a separate 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.