APT28

Overview

APT28 is a threat group that has been attributed to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS) military unit 26165. This group has been active since at least 2004. APT28 reportedly compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016 in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. In 2018, the US indicted five GRU Unit 26165 officers associated with APT28 for cyber operations (including close-access operations) conducted between 2014 and 2018 against the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the US Anti-Doping Agency, a US nuclear facility, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Spiez Swiss Chemicals Laboratory, and other organizations. Some of these were conducted with the assistance of GRU Unit 74455, which is also referred to as Sandworm Team.

Targets

Government · Military · Security Service

Regions

Afghanistan · Armenia · Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation · Belgium · China · European Commission · France · Georgia · Germany · Hungary · International Association of Athletics Federations · Japan · Jordan · Kazakhstan · Mongolia · NATO · OSCE · Pakistan · Poland · Tajikistan · Turkey · Ukraine · United Kingdom · United States · World Anti-Doping Agency

Capabilities

• Exploitation of public-facing / client applications — ATT&CK T1190, T1203, T1211
• Custom malware/implant development — ATT&CK: 19 attributed custom malware families

TTPs — 93 techniques across 15 tactics

Tools & malware (29)

Wevtutil · certutil · CHOPSTICK · Net · Forfiles · DealersChoice · Mimikatz · ADVSTORESHELL · Cannon · Komplex · HIDEDRV · JHUHUGIT · Koadic · Winexe · Responder · cipher.exe · XTunnel · Drovorub · LAMEHUG · Tor · CORESHELL · OLDBAIT · Downdelph · XAgentOSX · USBStealer · Zebrocy · reGeorg · Fysbis · LoJax

Reporting (3)

• The Nearest Neighbor Attack: How A Russian APT Weaponized Nearby Wi-Fi Networks for Covert Access — Koessel, Sean. Adair, Steven. Lancaster, Tom
• How Microsoft names threat actors — Microsoft
• Ukraine remains Russia’s biggest cyber focus in 2023 — Billy Leonard