APT41 is a threat group that researchers have assessed as Chinese state-sponsored espionage group that also conducts financially-motivated operations. Active since at least 2012, APT41 has been observed targeting various industries, including but not limited to healthcare, telecom, technology, finance, education, retail and video game industries in 14 countries.[1] Notable behaviors include using a wide range of malware and tools to complete mission objectives. APT41 overlaps at least partially with public reporting on groups including BARIUM and Winnti Group.[2][3]
82
TechniquesTop 2%
15
TacticsTop 1%
32
Tools & malwareTop 1%
2
Campaignsunranked
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.4
Command and Controlvia an attributed campaign only3 detection rules
APT41 has used hashdump, Mimikatz, Procdump, and the Windows Credential Editor to dump password hashes from memory and authenticate to other user accounts.567
APT41 extracted user account data from the Security Account Managerr (SAM), making a copy of this database from the registry using the reg save command or by exploiting volume shadow copies.8
During C0017,APT41 copied the SAM and SYSTEM Registry hives for credential harvesting.9
APT41 used the Steam community page as a fallback mechanism for C2.13
Command and Control5 detection rules
Standing G0096
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
Techniques82Top 2%
98th percentile · 98% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics15Top 1%
100th percentile · None of the 176 ATT&CK groups has more tactics spanned — the highest in the population.
Tools & malware32Top 1%
99th percentile · 99% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tools and malware or fewer.
Campaigns289% 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 / technique26med67th pct
67th percentile · 67% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique4med66th pct
66th percentile · 66% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many atomic tests per technique or fewer.
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 82 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. (...)
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. (...)
The following analytic detects suspicious modifications to firewall rule registry settings that allow inbound traffic on specific ports with a public profile. (...)
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 .