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Turla is a long-running Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage threat actor widely linked to the 16th Center of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Active since the late 1990s, it is one of Russia’s most established intelligence-focused intrusion groups and is also tracked under aliases including Secret Blizzard, Waterbug, Venomous Bear, Snake, Uroburos, WhiteBear, Pensive Ursa, Krypton, Iron Hunter, BelugaSturgeon, Wraith, ATG26, Group 88, and UAC-0003. Turla is associated with subclusters and malware lineages such as Snake/Uroburos and Kazuar, and has also deployed STOCKSTAY for long-term surveillance operations. Turla primarily conducts strategic cyber espionage and long-duration covert access operations. Its targeting has included government ministries, diplomatic organizations, defense bodies, justice-sector entities, technology companies, and other strategic public-sector institutions. Reported victimology includes Ukrainian government systems, Ukrainian and European diplomatic organizations, French ministries and justice-sector entities, and broader government and critical-infrastructure networks across multiple European states. The group has also abused ordinary businesses, associations, individuals, and peripheral systems as stepping stones or relay infrastructure to conceal operations and blend malicious traffic with legitimate activity. Its tradecraft emphasizes persistence, stealth, and intelligence collection. Reported initial access vectors include spearphishing, watering-hole activity, exploitation of vulnerable internet-facing systems, and compromise of network devices and routers. Turla has maintained long-term surveillance footholds, exploited trusted communications, and reused compromised infrastructure for covert relays. Across operations, it has been associated with privilege-escalation activity, process injection, persistence mechanisms including COM-related registry hijacking techniques, and use of both bespoke malware and public tools such as Mimikatz and Metasploit. Turla has operated against Windows, Linux, and macOS environments as well as email platforms, browsers, business applications, and web servers. Turla is best characterized as an intelligence service actor focused on espionage rather than financially motivated crime or ransomware. Western and European government attributions have tied it to sustained collection against military, government, diplomatic, and security targets, including continued activity against Ukraine and NATO- and EU-aligned targets during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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.
56 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
53 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
48 additional families tracked in Mallory.
8 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 8 of them exploited in the wild.
That campaign used malicious RAR archives exploiting a WinRAR path traversal flaw tracked as CVE-2025-8088.
The Java files exploit a popular vulnerability, CVE-2012-1723, in various configurations.
CVE-2013-3346 – Arbitrary code-execution vulnerability in Adobe Reader
The attacks are known to have used at least two zero-day exploits: CVE-2013-5065 – Privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows 2003
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.
3 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
286 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.
Russian threat actor discussed in the context of cyber operations supporting Russia’s actions against Ukraine, including use of Snake and Uroburos against Ukrainian government systems.
Referenced as a comparison point for attacks on diplomatic entities and foreign ministries via peripheral systems.
Mentioned as an example threat actor associated with COM hijacking/persistence techniques in a pedagogical offensive research repository about Windows COM attack surface.
FSB-attributed Russian APT specializing in long-term operations and covert persistence.
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.