Operation Sharpshooter was a global cyber espionage campaign that targeted nuclear, defense, government, energy, and financial companies, with many located in Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Security researchers noted the campaign shared many similarities with previous Lazarus Group operations, including fake job recruitment lures and shared malware code.[1][2][3]
13
Techniques34th pct
6
Tactics34th pct
1
Tool or malware45th pct
0
Threat groupsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
During Operation Sharpshooter, the first stage downloader resolved various Windows libraries and APIs, including LoadLibraryA(), GetProcAddress(), and CreateProcessA().9
Execution14 detection rules
Standing C0013
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
Techniques1334th pct
34th percentile · 66% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics634th pct
34th percentile · 66% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more tactics spanned.
Tool or malware145th pct
45th percentile · 55% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have more tools and malware.
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 / technique30medTop 11%
89th percentile · 89% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique3med66th pct
66th percentile · 66% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many atomic tests per technique or fewer.
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 / technique2medTop 16%
84th percentile · 84% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many mitigations per technique or fewer.
6 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this campaign’s 13 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tom Ueltschi, Jonhnathan Ribeiro, oscd.community
2017-11-10
2022-12-02
0bcfabcb-7929-47f4-93d6-b33fb67d34d1
Detects the suspicious file that is created from PoC code against Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-34527 (PrinterNightmare), CVE-2021-1675 .
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 execution of tools commonly exploited by cybercriminals, such as those used for unauthorized access, network scanning, privilege escalation, password dumping or data exfiltration. (...)
This search surfaces AWS Bedrock Claude prompts containing phrases commonly associated with prompt injection or jailbreak attempts, such as instruction overrides, persona switching, or requests to ignore prior guidance. (...)
This detection identifies sensitive data such as social security numbers, passwords, API keys, and credit card numbers being sent in prompts to AWS Bedrock Claude models. (...)
This detection identifies unusually large prompts sent to AWS Bedrock Claude models by calculating the statistical baseline of input token counts and flagging requests that exceed one standard deviations above the mean. (...)
Detects the Linux-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency by Axios NPM package, including payload download via curl and detached execution using nohup and python3. (...)
Detects the macOS-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency in Axios NPM Package, including AppleScript execution via osascript, payload download, permission modification, execution, and cleanup.
The following analytic detects the creation of a batch file (.bat) within the Windows system directory tree, specifically in the System32 or SysWOW64 folders. (...)
This analytic detects creation of a Cisco IOS-XE tunnel interface with tunnel source, tunnel destination, and an IP address in the 10.10.12.0 network. (...)
This analytic detects system binaries that are commonly abused in process injection techniques but are observed without any command-line arguments. (...)
This analytic detects unexpected outbound network connections initiated by known webserver processes such as `httpd.exe`, `nginx.exe`, or `tomcat.exe` to common file sharing or public content hosting services like GitHub, Discord CDN, Transfer.sh, or Pastebin. (...)
The following analytic detects potential reverse shell activity by identifying connections involving ports commonly associated with remote access tools, shell listeners, or tunneling utilities. (...)
The following analytic detects connections with a high Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) threat confidence score, indicating potentially malicious behavior within encrypted traffic. (...)
This analytic identifies Snort intrusion signatures that have been triggered by ten or more distinct internal IP addresses within a one-hour window. (...)