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Vicious Panda is a China-linked advanced persistent threat group associated with cyber-espionage activity in East Asia and parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Reported aliases include Microcin, SixLittleMonkeys, and Bronze Dudley. The group has been linked to campaigns targeting countries including Russia, Mongolia, and Ukraine, with additional reporting tying activity to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, and China. Vicious Panda has been observed using spearphishing and weaponized document delivery, including Royal Road-generated RTF lures exploiting Microsoft Office Equation Editor vulnerabilities such as CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, and CVE-2018-0802. The group was observed in Royal Road activity during 2020, and reporting linked that activity to malware similar to Enfal and BYEBY. Vicious Panda has also been publicly associated with abuse of Microsoft Word add-in persistence via the Startup path, a technique used to achieve execution and persistence. Broader reporting places Vicious Panda among Chinese state-linked actors that used COVID-19-themed lures and domain infrastructure during 2020, consistent with espionage-oriented collection against regional political, governmental, and strategic targets. Available evidence supports an assessment that the group’s dominant objective is intelligence collection rather than financially motivated crime or disruptive operations.
Who, where, and from where this actor operates. 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.
3 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt.
4 malware families Mallory has associated with this actor across public reporting.
3 CVEs Mallory has associated with this actor across public reporting. 3 of them are exploited in the wild (not necessarily by this actor).
6 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.