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Volt Typhoon is a China-based, People's Republic of China state-sponsored threat actor targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, particularly telecommunications, energy, electric utilities, water and wastewater, and transportation, including rail and aviation. It is also tracked as Bronze Silhouette, Vanguard Panda, Insidious Taurus, DEV-0391, Storm-0391, and UNC3236. Dragos tracks an overlapping activity cluster as VOLTZITE. Its principal assessed mission is to establish durable access that could enable disruptive or destructive operations during a geopolitical crisis or conflict, rather than conventional intelligence collection alone. The actor has maintained multiyear access to critical infrastructure networks, including footholds lasting at least five years. Volt Typhoon compromises internet-facing appliances and applications for initial access. Documented exploitation includes CVE-2021-40539 in ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus and CVE-2021-27860 in FatPipe products. It emphasizes hands-on-keyboard operations and living-off-the-land techniques, abusing legitimate Windows administration utilities and PowerShell to conduct reconnaissance, collect credentials, execute commands remotely, and modify network configurations. Credential-access techniques include copying Active Directory databases and associated registry data, searching for stored credentials, and conducting password spraying and brute-force attempts. It uses webshells for persistence and exfiltration, remote administration tools for lateral movement, and selective log clearing to conceal activity. The group routes traffic through compromised small-office and home-office routers and other edge devices to obscure its origin and resemble traffic from local internet providers. Its infrastructure has included the KV botnet, disrupted by U.S. authorities in January 2024, as well as Earthworm and customized Fast Reverse Proxy tooling. Associated VOLTZITE activity includes collecting geographic information, grid topology, operational technology network diagrams, SCADA configurations, operating instructions, and engineering-workstation configuration and alarm data to understand operational dependencies and potential process-shutdown conditions.
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.
85 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
37 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
32 additional families tracked in Mallory.
33 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 33 of them exploited in the wild.
Initial Access: Volt Typhoon is known to exploit both known and zero-day vulnerabilities; known targeted products include Fortinet, Ivanti Connect Secure (formerly Pulse Secure), NETGEAR, Citrix, and Cisco CISA makes specific reference to the known FortiGate 300D firewall vulnerability CVE-2022-42475
Fortinet disclosed in February that the Chinese Volt Typhoon hacking group exploited two FortiOS SSL VPN flaws (CVE-2022-42475 and CVE-2023-27997) to backdoor a Dutch Ministry of Defence military network using custom Coathanger remote access trojan (RAT) malware.
Exploiting vulnerabilities in widely used software including, but not limited to: CVE-2021-40539—ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus.
"Lumen Technologies reported Chinese APT Volt Typhoon exploiting Versa Director servers (CVE-2024-39717), enabling credential interception and malicious code injection." | Lumen Technologies reported Chinese APT Volt Typhoon exploiting Versa Director servers (CVE-2024-39717), enabling credential interception and malicious code injection.
Exploiting vulnerabilities in widely used software including, but not limited to: ... CVE-2021-27860—FatPipe WARP, IPVPN, MPVPN.
28 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
196 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.
Cited as a background example supporting proposed U.S. cybersecurity reforms. The group maintained long-term access to U.S. critical infrastructure networks, illustrating the threat of Chinese pre-positioning for potential disruption during geopolitical conflict.
A Chinese state-backed actor whose campaign allegedly exploited TP-Link routers among several router brands, according to congressional testimony cited in the complaints. The article notes that the written testimony provides no source for this claim. TP-Link disputed the testimony, saying the campaigns showed no discernible preference for TP-Link routers.
A China-linked threat actor whose campaign allegedly exploited TP-Link routers. The content identifies energy, rail, water, and aviation as targeted sectors and discusses compromised SOHO routers being used to launch attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure.
Mentioned as historical evidence supporting state allegations about TP-Link product security. The cited testimony says TP-Link routers were exploited in its campaigns; the article provides no further actor-specific operational details.
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.