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BlackTech, also tracked as Earth Hundun and Palmerworm, is a China-linked cyber-espionage threat actor focused on the Asia-Pacific region, particularly East Asia. The group has conducted long-running intrusion activity against government, defense, technology, telecommunications, media, academia, research, manufacturing, and semiconductor organizations, with reporting indicating a strong focus on Japan and Taiwan. BlackTech is known for sustained development and reuse of custom malware families and loaders, including Waterbear, Deuterbear, TSCookie, Bifrose, Consock, LAMICE, BUSYICE, BTSDOOR, DELTABEEF, SELFMAKE, SPIDERPIG, and TELESWORD. Waterbear has existed in numerous versions since at least 2009 and is notable for modular staging, anti-analysis protections, encrypted command-and-control protocols, and use of legitimate executables for DLL sideloading. Deuterbear, observed from 2022 onward, represents a substantial evolution of that toolset, adding stronger anti-analysis, altered decryption and configuration handling, HTTPS-protected communications, and an RSA-to-RC4 key exchange model. The actor has used multiple initial-access methods, including spearphishing with macro-enabled documents, exploitation of public-facing applications such as Microsoft Exchange ProxyLogon, and trojanized software installers. Post-compromise tradecraft includes in-memory loading, custom downloaders and backdoors, persistence through autorun and logon-script mechanisms, DLL search-order hijacking, registry-based storage and configuration, remote shell access, file transfer, process and service manipulation, screenshot capture, and remote desktop functionality. BlackTech malware also demonstrates defense evasion through obfuscation, staged decryption, anti-debugging, anti-sandbox timing checks, and anti-memory-scanning techniques. Observed campaigns in 2021 included operations against Japanese media, telecommunications, defense, and academic targets, using LAMICE to deliver first-stage malware and follow-on payloads such as BUSYICE, BTSDOOR, TELESWORD, DELTABEEF, and SPIDERPIG. Reporting has also linked the group to Gh0stTimes. Overall, BlackTech is best characterized as a mature, persistent Chinese espionage actor with a long history of targeting strategic organizations in East Asia through custom malware, stealthy persistence, and continuously evolving intrusion tooling.
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.
38 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt.
19 malware families Mallory has associated with this actor across public reporting.
14 additional families tracked in Mallory.
1 CVE Mallory has associated with this actor across public reporting. 1 of them is exploited in the wild (not necessarily by this actor).
3 indicators attributed to this actor. Values are masked here and available in full in Mallory.
3 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.