Leviathan is a Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage group that has been attributed to the Ministry of State Security's (MSS) Hainan State Security Department and an affiliated front company.[1] Active since at least 2009, Leviathan has targeted the following sectors: academia, aerospace/aviation, biomedical, defense industrial base, government, healthcare, manufacturing, maritime, and transportation across the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.[1][2][3][4]
50
TechniquesTop 15%
13
TacticsTop 15%
17
Tools & malwareTop 8%
1
Campaignunranked
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this group 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 176 ATT&CK groups 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
Techniques50Top 15%
85th percentile · 85% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics13Top 15%
85th percentile · 85% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tactics spanned or fewer.
Tools & malware17Top 8%
92nd percentile · 92% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tools and malware or fewer.
Campaign189% tie · 4 values
89% of the population shares a single value across only 4 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique9.5medBottom 22%
22nd percentile · 78% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique1.5med26th pct
26th percentile · 74% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more atomic tests per technique.
Data comps / technique4med65% tie · 12 values
65% of the population shares a single value across only 12 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Mitigations / technique2med43% tie · 11 values
43% of the population shares a single value across only 11 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
5 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this group’s 50 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
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. (...)
Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', MikeDuddington, '@dudders1', Tim Shelton
2022-08-11
2022-08-18
6f583da0-3a90-4566-a4ed-83c09fe18bbf
This method uses uncommon error codes on failed logons to determine suspicious activity and tampering with accounts that have been disabled or somehow restricted.
The following analytic detects potential exploitation of the Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability, CVE-2023-26360, which allows unauthenticated arbitrary file read. (...)
Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tom Ueltschi, Jonhnathan Ribeiro, oscd.community
2017-11-10
2022-12-02
0bcfabcb-7929-47f4-93d6-b33fb67d34d1
Splunk
The following analytic detects suspicious modifications to firewall rule registry settings that allow inbound traffic on specific ports with a public profile. (...)
Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Bailey Bercik '@baileybercik'
2022-06-01
—
248649b7-d64f-46f0-9fb2-a52774166fb5
Resource owner password credentials (ROPC) should be avoided if at all possible as this requires the user to expose their current password credentials to the application directly. (...)
Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Bailey Bercik '@baileybercik'
2022-06-01
—
55695bc0-c8cf-461f-a379-2535f563c854
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. (...)
Identifies two sign-ins originating from geographically distant locations, where at least one of the locations may also be atypical for the user, given past behavior.