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Night Dragon is a long-reported intrusion campaign associated with Chinese state-linked cyber espionage targeting, particularly against the energy sector. The activity is best known for intrusions into oil and gas organizations and related operational technology and industrial control system environments, including compromises involving pipeline and SCADA-related information. The campaign has been linked to theft of sensitive business and technical data rather than disruptive or destructive objectives. Observed tradecraft includes initial access through SQL injection against externally exposed web servers and use of compromised VPN accounts to enter victim environments. After access, operators used password cracking and pass-the-hash techniques to obtain usernames, passwords, and authenticated access to internal desktops and servers. The actors deployed privately developed and customized remote access tools, along with multiple remote administration tools used as persistent infiltration channels. zwShell has been associated with the campaign for full remote control and victim file-system browsing. Night Dragon operators staged and exfiltrated data by copying files to compromised company web servers and later downloading them. Command and control has been observed over HTTP. Defense evasion included disabling antivirus and antispyware tools and altering proxy settings to permit direct Internet communications from victim hosts. Reporting has also associated the campaign with software packing and with overlaps or intersections involving PlugX- and Winnti-related activity, though such overlaps do not by themselves establish common authorship. Night Dragon should be understood primarily as an espionage campaign rather than a ransomware or extortion operation.
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.
13 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
1 malware family attributed to this actor across reporting.
2 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.
A likely successor Android RAT platform introduced after the Flying Eagle code leak, offering remote device control, phishing overlays, password capture for financial apps, black-screen deception, and icon hiding. It appears financially motivated and aimed at Chinese mobile victims.
Copied files to company web servers and later downloaded them, indicating staging via web-accessible infrastructure.
Campaign involving password cracking and pass-the-hash to discover usernames and passwords.
Referenced historically as the campaign in which the Redsip backdoor was described; the report argues Zupdax is a redesign of Redsip, creating a lineage link rather than asserting Night Dragon equals Space Pirates.
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.