Elderwood · Elderwood Gang · Beijing Group · Sneaky Panda
Elderwood is a suspected Chinese cyber espionage group that was reportedly responsible for the 2009 Google intrusion known as Operation Aurora. [1] The group has targeted defense organizations, supply chain manufacturers, human rights and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and IT service providers. [2][3]
9
Techniques30th pct
4
TacticsBottom 20%
9
Tools & malwareTop 19%
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
Elderwood has delivered zero-day exploits and malware to victims by injecting malicious code into specific public Web pages visited by targets within a particular sector.789
Elderwood has used exploitation of endpoint software, including Microsoft Internet Explorer Adobe Flash vulnerabilities, to gain execution. They have also used zero-day exploits.10
Elderwood has leveraged multiple types of spearphishing in order to attempt to get a user to open links.1112
Execution6 detection rules
Standing G0066
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
Techniques930th pct
30th percentile · 70% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics4Bottom 20%
20th percentile · 80% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more tactics spanned.
Tools & malware9Top 19%
81st percentile · 81% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tools and malware or fewer.
Campaigns089% 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 / technique13med37th pct
37th percentile · 63% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique2med34th pct
34th percentile · 66% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more atomic tests per technique.
Data comps / technique5med65% 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 / technique3med43% 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 9 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.
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 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 file downloads involving executable, archive, or scripting-related file types that are commonly used in malware delivery. (...)
Michael Haag, Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, Talos NTDR
2025-07-17
2026-05-13
93db24a0-fd21-45d7-9daf-84afd5a8cca2
Splunk
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. (...)
The following analytic detects the execution of the curl utility where the command line includes percent-encoded characters and explicit file output options (such as -o or --output). (...)
Detects exploitation attempt of CVE-2023-38331 (WinRAR before v6.23), where an attacker can leverage WinRAR to execute arbitrary commands and binaries.