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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.
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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.
3 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
4 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
3 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 3 of them exploited in the wild.
Royal Road is a tool that generates RTF files that exploit the Microsoft Office Equation Editor vulnerabilities (CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, CVE-2018-0802).
Royal Road is a tool that generates RTF files that exploit the Microsoft Office Equation Editor vulnerabilities (CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, CVE-2018-0802).
Royal Road is a tool that generates RTF files that exploit the Microsoft Office Equation Editor vulnerabilities (CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, CVE-2018-0802).
6 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Associated in the article with COVID-19-related domains and described as part of Mandarin-speaking activity focused on health research, intellectual property, trade secrets, and corporate espionage using COVID-19-themed malware and phishing campaigns.
ViciousPanda is a threat group named by vendors such as Checkpoint, Kaspersky, and ClearSky, not CrowdStrike. No specific activity is described in this content.
China-linked espionage group observed using Royal Road in attacks targeting East Asia, including Russia, Mongolia, and Ukraine.
Mentioned only as another APT group previously reported using the same Word add-in persistence technique.
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.