During Operation Sharpshooter, threat actors installed Rising Sun in the Startup folder and disguised it as mssync.exe.4
campaign
Operation Sharpshooter C0013
- First seen
- September 2017
- Last seen
- March 2019
- Created
- 26 September 2022
- Last modified
- 31 July 2026
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.
MITRE reference C0013
During Operation Sharpshooter, threat actors leveraged embedded shellcode to inject a downloader into the memory of Word.5
During Operation Sharpshooter, the threat actors used a VBA macro to execute a simple downloader that installed Rising Sun.6
For Operation Sharpshooter, the threat actors used the ExpressVPN service to hide their location.7
During Operation Sharpshooter, additional payloads were downloaded after a target was infected with a first-stage downloader.8
During Operation Sharpshooter, the first stage downloader resolved various Windows libraries and APIs, including LoadLibraryA(), GetProcAddress(), and CreateProcessA().9
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 / technique27medTop 20%
80th percentile · 80% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique3med
Detection coverage C0013
422 distinct rules cover the 13 techniques recorded for this campaign. The 434 technique-to-rule mappings resolve to 422 distinct rules, because one rule can cover several techniques. 295 Sigma · 127 Splunk.
12 covered by at least one rule1 with no coverage422 distinct rules in total
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