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APT37 is a North Korea-linked espionage threat actor also tracked as ScarCruft, Reaper, Ricochet Chollima, InkySquid, and TA-RedAnt. The group primarily targets South Korean individuals and organizations, especially people working on North Korea-related issues, research, policy, academia, and other politically sensitive topics. Reported operations also show interest in developers, information security personnel, and air-gapped environments. APT37 is known for spear-phishing and socially engineered delivery chains using realistic lures tied to current events, academic conferences, security notices, and military-themed documents. The group has repeatedly used document-lookalike executables, malicious shortcut files, ISO-based delivery, and compromised or abused legitimate services to gain initial access. Public reporting also links the actor to malvertising-based delivery and suspected exploitation of Microsoft zero-day vulnerabilities, although some zero-day attribution remains uncorroborated. The actor has deployed and operated malware including RokRAT, RoKRAT, NarwhalRAT, Rustonotto, Chinotto, BirdCall, and FadeStealer. RokRAT-related activity shows extensive use of cloud platforms for command and control and exfiltration, including services such as Dropbox, pCloud, Yandex Cloud, and Zoho WorkDrive. Observed capabilities include host fingerprinting, command execution, screen capture, process enumeration, drive enumeration, recursive document theft, cleanup of artifacts, and execution of additional payloads. NarwhalRAT has been reported performing information gathering, keylogging, screen capture, microphone recording, USB collection, and remote command execution. APT37 frequently emphasizes stealth and defense evasion. Reported tradecraft includes memory-only shellcode restoration, process injection into legitimate processes, use of suspended-process injection, abuse of legitimate cloud services for C2, spoofed user agents, and persistence through scheduled tasks and Windows Run-key mechanisms. The group has also demonstrated techniques for bypassing network separation, including LNK-based initial compromise, cloud-backed command channels, runtime droppers, and removable-media-based command delivery and data exfiltration into air-gapped environments. The actor is assessed as state-sponsored and primarily motivated by espionage in support of North Korean intelligence objectives.
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.
38 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
29 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
24 additional families tracked in Mallory.
15 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 15 of them exploited in the wild.
Scarcruft ... Attack using Flash Zero Day (CVE-2016-4171, CVE-2018-4878)
ScarCruft exploits CVE-2020-1380 to compromise victims.
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.
APT37 has used exploits for Flash Player (CVE-2016-4117, CVE-2018-4878)...
...used exploits for... Word (CVE-2017-0199)...
10 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
306 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.
Assessed as highly likely responsible for Operation Capsule Vault, a spear-phishing campaign delivering a RokRAT variant against people in research, policy, and academic fields using Dropbox-hosted ISO files and a disguised PIF payload for in-memory execution and cloud-based C2.
Referenced as the threat actor associated with BirdCall malware in a post linking to an analysis of malware masquerading as Zangi Messenger.
Used NarwhalRAT for surveillance and information theft, including keylogging, screen capture, and microphone recording.
Likely connected to Operation Capsule Vault, a targeted spear-phishing campaign using real academic event materials to deliver a RokRAT variant via a cloud-hosted ISO image and a document-disguised executable.
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.