Operation Spalax was a campaign that primarily targeted Colombian government organizations and private companies, particularly those associated with the energy and metallurgical industries. The Operation Spalax threat actors distributed commodity malware and tools using generic phishing topics related to COVID-19, banking, and law enforcement action. Security researchers noted indicators of compromise and some infrastructure overlaps with other campaigns dating back to April 2018, including at least one separately attributed to APT-C-36, however identified enough differences to report this as separate, unattributed activity.[1]
17
Techniques50th pct
6
Tactics34th pct
2
Tools & malware63rd pct
0
Threat groupsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
For Operation Spalax, the threat actors used packers that read pixel data from images contained in PE files' resource sections and build the next layer of execution from the data.3
For Operation Spalax, the threat actors used a variety of packers and droppers to decrypt malicious payloads.7
Stealth20 detection rules
Standing C0005
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this campaign touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 56 ATT&CK campaigns only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.
Reach
Techniques1750th pct
50th percentile · 50% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics634th pct
34th percentile · 66% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more tactics spanned.
Tools & malware263rd pct
63rd percentile · 63% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many tools and malware or fewer.
Threat groups055% tie · 3 values
55% of the population shares a single value across only 3 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique7medBottom 16%
16th percentile · 84% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique0medBottom 23%
23rd percentile · 77% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more atomic tests per technique.
Data comps / technique3med43% tie · 7 values
43% of the population shares a single value across only 7 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Mitigations / technique1med38th pct
38th percentile · 62% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more mitigations per technique.
6 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this campaign’s 17 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
Detects when AppLocker "Audit only" enforcement mode reports that an Application, DLL, Script, MSI, or Packaged-App would have been blocked if AppLocker "Enforce rules" enforcement mode was enabled.
The following analytic detects the creation of a batch file (.bat) within the Windows system directory tree, specifically in the System32 or SysWOW64 folders. (...)
Li Ling, Andy Parkidomo, Robert Rakowski, Blake Hartstein (Bloomberg L.P.)
2024-09-02
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db1ac3be-f606-4e3a-89e0-9607cbe6b98a
Splunk
The following analytic detects the use of CertUtil.exe with the 'decode' argument, which may indicate an attempt to decode a previously encoded file, potentially containing malicious payloads. (...)
This analytic detects suspicious python package installations where the package name resembles popular Python libraries but may be typosquatted or slightly altered. (...)
The following analytic detects file downloads involving executable, archive, or scripting-related file types that are commonly used in malware delivery. (...)
This analytic detects HTTP requests to privileged execution paths on Cisco routers, specifically targeting the `/level/15/exec/-/*` endpoint using Cisco Secure Firewall Intrusion Events. (...)
Detects when the Console Window Host (conhost.exe) process is spawned by an uncommon parent process, which could be indicative of potential code injection activity.
Detects exploitation attempt of CVE-2023-22518 (Confluence Data Center / Confluence Server), where an attacker can exploit vulnerable endpoints to e.g. (...)
Detects exploitation attempt of CVE-2023-22518 (Confluence Data Center / Confluence Server), where an attacker can exploit vulnerable endpoints to e.g. (...)