BabyShark

"...using typosquatting or domains thematically aligned with their target."

“Spearphishing—with a malicious attachment embedded in the email—is the most observed Kimsuky tactic (Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment [T1566.001]).”

“Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.” / “APT29 used scheduler and schtasks to create new tasks on remote host as part of their lateral movement… updating an existing legitimate task to execute their tools and then returned the scheduled task to its original configuration.”

During the 2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.

Most open-source reporting on APT43 tracks the group using LATEOP (known publicly as ‘BabyShark’) ... its activities are much better known for being associated with LATEOP, a backdoor based on VisualBasic scripts.

"Once the obfuscated malicious PowerShell command is executed..." / "execution of a PowerShell script that performs extensive system reconnaissance"

During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used the xp_cmdshell command in MS-SQL. During the 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks, the adversaries leveraged PsExec to run cmd.exe commands on multiple victim machines. Numerous malware families and groups are described as using cmd.exe, cmd /c, Windows command shell, or command-line interfaces to execute commands, payloads, reconnaissance, persistence, cleanup, and ransomware actions.

The content repeatedly describes threat actors and malware using VBScript, VBS, VBA macros, and Visual Basic code for execution, payload delivery, persistence, reconnaissance, and command execution.

“Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.” / “APT29 used scheduler and schtasks to create new tasks on remote host as part of their lateral movement… updating an existing legitimate task to execute their tools and then returned the scheduled task to its original configuration.”

During the 2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.

Across the content, malware repeatedly 'adds Registry Run keys', 'creates Registry entries', 'modifies the Windows Registry', or 'overwrites registry keys' to maintain persistence.

BabyShark has added a Registry key to ensure all future macros are enabled for Microsoft Word and Excel as well as for additional persistence.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors establishing persistence by adding values under HKCU/HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or RunOnce, and by placing executables, scripts, .lnk files, or .bat files in the Windows Startup folder.

“Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.” / “APT29 used scheduler and schtasks to create new tasks on remote host as part of their lateral movement… updating an existing legitimate task to execute their tools and then returned the scheduled task to its original configuration.”

During the 2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors establishing persistence by adding values under HKCU/HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or RunOnce, and by placing executables, scripts, .lnk files, or .bat files in the Windows Startup folder.

Examples throughout the content include deleting tools, logs, malware-related files, staged archives, screenshots, temporary files, and exfiltrated data 'to cover their tracks,' 'reduce their footprint,' 'remove traces of activity,' or as part of 'post-intrusion cleanup.'

The content repeatedly describes threat actors and malware deleting files, tools, scripts, logs, droppers, staged data, and artifacts from compromised systems to cover tracks, remove evidence, or self-delete.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors decoding, decrypting, or deobfuscating payloads, strings, configuration data, commands, and C2 traffic prior to execution or use, e.g., 'APT28 macro uses the command certutil -decode to decode contents of a .txt file storing the base64 encoded payload' and 'Action RAT can use Base64 to decode actor-controlled C2 server communications.'

Multiple actors and malware families are described as using mshta/mshta.exe (including renamed mshta.exe) to execute malicious scripts/HTA/HTML/VBScript/JavaScript, download and run payloads from remote servers, and in one case help schedule tasks for persistence.

Across the content, malware repeatedly 'adds Registry Run keys', 'creates Registry entries', 'modifies the Windows Registry', or 'overwrites registry keys' to maintain persistence.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors querying, enumerating, searching, reading, or checking Windows Registry keys and values, e.g., "ADVSTORESHELL can enumerate registry keys," "APT41 queried registry values to determine items such as configured RDP ports and network configurations," and "Reg may be used to gather details from the Windows Registry of a local or remote system at the command-line interface."

The content repeatedly describes actors and malware using commands and APIs such as ipconfig /all, ifconfig, arp -a, route print, netsh interface show, GetAdaptersInfo, and GetIpNetTable to gather IP addresses, MAC addresses, DNS, DHCP, gateways, routing tables, ARP cache, proxy settings, and network adapter/interface details.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting usernames, identifying logged-in users, running whoami/query user/quser, checking admin status, and enumerating user sessions.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors obtaining lists of running processes, using utilities such as tasklist, ps, WMI, Get-Process, CreateToolhelp32Snapshot, EnumProcesses, and similar APIs/commands to enumerate active processes on victim systems.

The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting host details such as OS version, hostname, architecture, CPU, memory, BIOS, domain, language, and other configuration data; e.g., "APT41 uses multiple built-in commands such as systeminfo and net config Workstation to enumerate victim system basic configuration information."

“3PARA RAT has a command to retrieve metadata for files on disk as well as a command to list the current working directory… admin@338 actors used… dir c:\ >> %temp%\download … APT28 has used Forfiles to locate PDF, Excel, and Word documents…”

BabyShark has encoded data using certutil before exfiltration.

"leveraging GitHub as a stager... hard-coded Github Personal Access Token (PAT)... upload information" / "fetches... from Dropbox" / "Proton Drive link hosting a ZIP archive"