C0017 was an APT41 campaign conducted between May 2021 and February 2022 that successfully compromised at least six U.S. state government networks through the exploitation of vulnerable Internet facing web applications. During C0017, APT41 was quick to adapt and use publicly-disclosed as well as zero-day vulnerabilities for initial access, and in at least two cases re-compromised victims following remediation efforts. The goals of C0017 are unknown, however APT41 was observed exfiltrating Personal Identifiable Information (PII).[1]
29
TechniquesTop 14%
11
TacticsTop 23%
6
Tools & malwareTop 12%
1
Threat groupunranked
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
During C0017, APT41 frequently configured the URL endpoints of their stealthy passive backdoor LOWKEY.PASSIVE to masquerade as normal web application traffic on an infected server.2
During C0017, APT41 used VMProtect to slow the reverse engineering of malicious binaries.7
Stealth1 detection rules
Standing C0017
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
Techniques29Top 14%
86th percentile · 86% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics11Top 23%
77th percentile · 77% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many tactics spanned or fewer.
Tools & malware6Top 12%
88th percentile · 88% of 56 ATT&CK campaigns have this many tools and malware or fewer.
Threat group155% 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 / technique23med71st pct
71st percentile · 71% 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 / technique5med43% 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 29 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
1020 distinct rules cover the 29 techniques recorded for this campaign. 710 Sigma · 310 Splunk.
27 covered by at least one rule2 with no coverage1020 distinct rules in total
Showing 1-50 of 1,000+ rules
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Splunk
The following analytic identifies access to the /api/v1/configuration/users/user-roles/user-role/rest-userrole1/web/web-bookmarks/bookmark endpoint, which is associated with CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 vulnerabilities. (...)
The following analytic detects potential exploitation of the Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability, CVE-2023-26360, which allows unauthenticated arbitrary file read. (...)
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. (...)
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 assignment of high-risk Graph API permissions in Azure AD, specifically Application.ReadWrite.All, AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All, and RoleManagement.ReadWrite.Directory. (...)
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. (...)
Adversaries may communicate using application layer protocols associated with web traffic to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. (...)
The following analytic identifies the execution of the "whoami" command with the "/group" flag, where the results are passed to the "find" command in order to look for a the string "12288". (...)