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Star Blizzard is a Russian state-sponsored cyberespionage actor associated with Centre 18 of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), active since at least 2017. It is also tracked as SEABORGIUM, COLDRIVER or Cold River, Callisto Group, BlueCharlie, TA446, TAG-53, Gossamer Bear, KTA260, and UNC4057. Its targets include government and diplomatic organizations, defense organizations, academia, think tanks, NGOs, journalists, politicians, Russia experts, and financial institutions. Prominent target countries include the United States, United Kingdom, and Ukraine, with substantial attention to individuals and organizations supporting Ukraine. The group researches targets through open sources and professional networks, impersonates trusted contacts and experts, and establishes correspondence before delivering credential-harvesting links or malicious attachments. Lures include conference invitations, research collaboration, tax notices, and financial correspondence. Star Blizzard uses Evilginx to steal passwords and session cookies, allowing it to bypass some multifactor-authentication protections. Following email-account compromise, it steals messages and attachments, establishes forwarding rules for continuing collection, and exploits contact lists and compromised accounts for follow-on phishing. During 2026, Star Blizzard supplemented carefully tailored spear-phishing with larger campaigns sending tens to hundreds of messages and targeting more than 100 organizations, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom. It used sender accounts on compromised WordPress and cPanel websites and messages resembling internal correspondence. Its RedFlick delivery chain uses password-protected archives, disguised Windows shortcuts or virtual disk containers, legitimate Windows utilities, and MSI installers to deploy the Python-based CosmicPulse backdoor. Scheduled tasks provide persistence and support host-information collection, payload retrieval, and execution. Later variants concealed encoded PowerShell payload data inside PDF documents. These techniques reduce required victim interaction and obscure malicious activity within legitimate system operations. The CosmicPulse downloader is also known as NOROBOT or BAITSWITCH, while the backdoor payload is also called YESROBOT.
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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.
38 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
17 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
12 additional families tracked in Mallory.
7 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 7 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.
The exploit chains six CVEs: CVE-2025-31277, CVE-2025-43529, CVE-2026-20700, CVE-2025-14174, CVE-2025-43510, and CVE-2025-43520.
The exploit chains six CVEs: CVE-2025-31277, CVE-2025-43529, CVE-2026-20700, CVE-2025-14174, CVE-2025-43510, and CVE-2025-43520.
The exploit chains six CVEs: CVE-2025-31277, CVE-2025-43529, CVE-2026-20700, CVE-2025-14174, CVE-2025-43510, and CVE-2025-43520.
The exploit chains six CVEs: CVE-2025-31277, CVE-2025-43529, CVE-2026-20700, CVE-2025-14174, CVE-2025-43510, and CVE-2025-43520.
2 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
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.
Cited as an example of spear phishing in a general phishing-awareness article. Targets selected individuals, government agencies and defense companies with deceptive emails intended to obtain sensitive information.
A Russia-aligned threat actor mentioned as a previous operator of the DarkSword iOS exploit kit, using fake invitation lures. The content does not attribute the P7 variant to this actor or explicitly establish state sponsorship.
Russian state-linked group conducting large-scale phishing and malware-delivery campaigns. Since January 2026, Microsoft identified at least 13 campaigns affecting more than 100 organizations, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom, with Ukrainian individuals also targeted. The group uses compromised websites to send phishing emails and the RedFlick technique to deploy CosmicPulse through infection chains requiring less user interaction. Scheduled tasks support execution, persistence, and command-and-control communication.
Russian state-backed cyber-espionage group that expanded from highly targeted spear-phishing to mass-mailing phishing campaigns. It uses compromised websites for phishing delivery and the RedFlick malware-delivery method to install the CosmicPulse backdoor, seeking broader reach, improved evasion, and more successful compromises.
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.