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MirrorFace is a China-aligned cyber-espionage threat actor active since at least 2019 and widely assessed as operating within the APT10 umbrella. It is also tracked as Earth Kasha. The group has historically focused almost exclusively on Japanese targets, including government agencies, politicians, political organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, media organizations, research institutes, and entities in defense-adjacent, high-technology, and manufacturing sectors. More recent activity shows expansion beyond Japan to organizations with diplomatic or strategic relevance to Japanese and broader Chinese state interests, including a Central European diplomatic institute. MirrorFace is assessed to conduct intelligence collection rather than financially motivated operations. Its targeting and operational patterns align with Chinese state espionage priorities, particularly national security, foreign policy, political intelligence, and advanced technology collection. The actor is known for tailored spearphishing and social engineering, including emails impersonating trusted or politically relevant senders such as a Japanese political party’s public-relations department. In different campaigns it has also exploited vulnerabilities in internet-facing enterprise infrastructure, including VPN and proxy appliances, to gain initial access. MirrorFace has used a mix of custom malware, repurposed tooling, and legitimate software. Malware and tooling associated with the group include ANEL, ANELLDR, HiddenFace, NOOPDOOR, LODEINFO, UPPERCUT, a heavily customized AsyncRAT variant, and MRSAStealer or MSRAStealer. HiddenFace or NOOPDOOR is a modular backdoor strongly associated with MirrorFace and regarded as one of its most distinctive tools. The group’s renewed use of ANEL, previously closely linked to APT10, is a key factor supporting its placement under the APT10 umbrella. Its execution chains commonly rely on DLL side-loading, malicious document templates with VBA, PowerShell, cmd.exe, MSBuild, WMI, and abuse of signed binaries. MirrorFace has been observed abusing weaknesses in Microsoft signature verification semantics and using signed legitimate executables to load malicious components. It has also used Visual Studio Code Remote Tunnels for covert remote access and command and control, reflecting an emphasis on blending into legitimate administrative activity. Post-compromise activity includes host and domain discovery, file and directory enumeration, collection of documents and emails, export of browser-stored data, credential theft, and staging of data on compromised systems prior to exfiltration. The group has used native Windows utilities and dual-use tools for reconnaissance and credential access, and has leveraged tools such as PuTTY, FRP, Rubeus, Cobalt Strike, and proxying utilities during operations. Reported exfiltration methods include SCP, SFTP, and RDP. MirrorFace demonstrates mature defense-evasion and anti-forensics tradecraft. Observed behaviors include disabling Windows Defender, modifying host firewall settings, clearing Windows event logs, deleting malware directories and collected archives, removing delivered tools after use, using Base64-encoded shellcode, and in some cases executing malware inside Windows Sandbox to reduce visibility and complicate forensic reconstruction. A notable 2024 campaign, Operation AkaiRyū, marked a significant evolution in MirrorFace tradecraft. During that operation the group used highly tailored lures related to Expo 2025 in Osaka, revived the ANEL backdoor after years of dormancy, deployed customized AsyncRAT, abused signed software in its loader chain, and used Visual Studio Code Remote Tunnels for stealthy access. This campaign also highlighted MirrorFace’s expansion beyond its traditional Japan-centric victimology while preserving the same espionage-oriented objectives and tooling lineage. Known aliases include Earth Kasha. MirrorFace is best understood as a stealth-focused Chinese espionage subgroup linked to APT10, distinguished by Japan-centric targeting, bespoke phishing, modular backdoors such as HiddenFace, and disciplined operational security.
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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.
75 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
12 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
7 additional families tracked in Mallory.
1 CVE this actor has used in observed campaigns. 1 of them exploited in the wild.
7 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.
Cyber-espionage operations focused for years on Japanese government, political, think tank, academic, media, defense-adjacent, high-tech, and manufacturing targets, then expanded in late 2024 to a European diplomatic institute. The group uses targeted spear-phishing and exploitation of internet-facing enterprise products, DLL side-loading, ANEL/ANELLDR, HiddenFace/NOOPDOOR, customized AsyncRAT, Visual Studio Code Remote Tunnels, and anti-forensics such as deleting tools and clearing Windows event logs.
Listed as an associated threat actor in the detection annotation for exploitation of the public-facing PTC Windchill vulnerability CVE-2026-4681.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection.
Conducting spearphishing-led intrusion and espionage activity, including credential theft, malware deployment, data collection, staging, and exfiltration. The group uses custom malware and public tools, exploits Fortigate and Array AG devices for initial access, and employed multiple post-compromise discovery, credential dumping, defense evasion, and lateral movement techniques during Operation AkaiRyū.
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.