group

HAFNIUM G0125

Created: 3 March 2021
Last modified: 31 July 2026
Aliases: HAFNIUM · Operation Exchange Marauder · Silk Typhoon

HAFNIUM is a likely state-sponsored cyber espionage group operating out of China that has been active since at least January 2021. HAFNIUM primarily targets entities in the US across a number of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs. HAFNIUM has targeted remote management tools and cloud software for intial access and has demonstrated an ability to quickly operationalize exploits for identified vulnerabilities in edge devices.[1][2][3]

TechniquesTop 19%

TacticsTop 6%

Tools & malware67th pct

CampaignsNone recorded

Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID
Splunk	The following analytic detects the execution of 7z or 7za processes with command lines pointing to SMB network shares. (...)	Hunting	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Collection Archive Collected Data Archive via Utility	-	medium	Teoderick Contreras, Splunk	2021-08-17	2026-05-13	01d29b48-ff6f-11eb-b81e-acde48001123
	Detects execution of 7z in order to compress a file with a ".dmp"/".dump" extension, which could be a step in a process of dump file exfiltration.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Collection Archive Collected Data Archive via Utility	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-09-27	2026-06-05	ec570e53-4c76-45a9-804d-dc3f355ff7a7
	Detects activity when a member is added to a security-enabled global group	Generic	stable	account_management	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	low	Alexandr Yampolskyi, SOC Prime	2023-04-26	—	c43c26be-2e87-46c7-8661-284588c5a53e
	Detects activity when a member is removed from a security-enabled global group	Generic	stable	-	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	low	Alexandr Yampolskyi, SOC Prime	2023-04-26	—	02c39d30-02b5-45d2-b435-8aebfe5a8629
	Addition of domains is seldom and should be verified for legitimacy.	Generic	stable	-	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	medium	Thomas Patzke	2019-12-03	2024-01-16	0255a820-e564-4e40-af2b-6ac61160335c
	Detects activity when a security-enabled global group is deleted	Generic	stable	account_management	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	low	Alexandr Yampolskyi, SOC Prime	2023-04-26	—	b237c54b-0f15-4612-a819-44b735e0de27
Splunk	The following analytic detects attempts to dump the LSASS process memory, a common technique in credential dumping attacks. (...)	Generic	stable	process_access	windows	Sysmon	Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory	-	medium	Patrick Bareiss, Splunk	2019-12-11	2026-10-09	fb4c31b0-13e8-4155-8aa5-24de4b8d6717
	Detects the execution of a text-based file access or inspection utilities to read the content of /etc/sudoers in order to potentially list all users that have sudo rights.	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Reconnaissance Gather Victim Host Information Client Configurations	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-20	2025-06-04	0f79c4d2-4e1f-4683-9c36-b5469a665e06
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. (...)	Generic	stable	webserver	-	Suricata	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2024-21887 CVE-2023-46805 CVE-2023-46085	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2024-01-17	2026-05-13	15838756-f425-43fa-9d88-a7f88063e81a
	Detects when an account is disabled or blocked for sign in but tried to log in	Generic	test	authentication	-	Azure Sign-in Logs · Azure	Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Stealth Valid Accounts Cloud Accounts	-	medium	Yochana Henderson, '@Yochana-H'	2022-06-17	—	4afac85c-224a-4dd7-b1af-8da40e1c60bd
	Detects usage of the "Get-AdComputer" to enumerate Computers or properties within Active Directory.	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Discovery Account Discovery Domain Account Discovery Remote System Discovery	-	low	frack113	2022-03-17	2023-07-08	36bed6b2-e9a0-4fff-beeb-413a92b86138
	Detects scenarios where one can control another users or computers account without having to use their credentials.	Generic	test	account_management	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	high	@neu5ron	2017-04-13	2024-02-26	300bac00-e041-4ee2-9c36-e262656a6ecc
	Detects the creation of a machine account whose name starts with 'GHOST', which is the naming conven (...)	Emerging	experimental	account_management	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence Create Account Domain Account Credential Access Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates	CVE-2026-54121	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-07-30	—	fa0bac5f-d170-4a91-9780-1ad71dc1f49e
	Detects suspicious local connections via a named pipe to the AD FS configuration database (Windows Internal Database). (...)	Generic	test	pipe_created	windows	Sysmon	Collection Data from Local System	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g	2021-10-08	2023-11-30	1ea13e8c-03ea-409b-877d-ce5c3d2c1cb3
	Detect remote login by Administrator user (depending on internal pattern).	Generic	test	authentication	windows	WinEventLog Security	Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Stealth Valid Accounts Default Accounts Domain Accounts Local Accounts	-	low	juju4	2017-10-29	2022-10-09	0f63e1ef-1eb9-4226-9d54-8927ca08520a
Splunk	The following analytic detects potential exploitation attempts against Adobe ColdFusion vulnerabilities CVE-2023-29298 and CVE-2023-26360. (...)	Anomaly	stable	webserver	-	Suricata	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2023-29298 CVE-2023-26360	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2023-08-23	2026-05-13	d6821c0b-fcdc-4c95-a77f-e10752fae41a
Splunk	The following analytic detects potential exploitation of the Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability, CVE-2023-26360, which allows unauthenticated arbitrary file read. (...)	Anomaly	stable	webserver	-	Suricata	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2023-26360	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2023-08-23	2026-05-13	695aceae-21db-4e7f-93ac-a52e39d02b93
	Detects suspicious access to URLs that was noticed in cases in which attackers exploitated the ADSel (...)	Emerging	test	webserver	-	-	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2021-40539	high	Tobias Michalski (Nextron Systems), Max Altgelt (Nextron Systems)	2021-09-20	2023-01-02	6702b13c-e421-44cc-ab33-42cc25570f11
	Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe	Generic	test	ps_module	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g	2019-08-11	2025-10-17	64e8e417-c19a-475a-8d19-98ea705394cc
	Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe	Generic	test	pipe_created	windows	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g, Tim Shelton	2019-09-12	2025-10-07	58cb02d5-78ce-4692-b3e1-dce850aae41a
Splunk	The following analytic detects the execution of 7z.exe, a 7-Zip utility, spawned from rundll32.exe or dllhost.exe. (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Collection Archive Collected Data Archive via Utility	-	medium	Michael Haag, Teoderick Contreras, Splunk	2021-04-22	2026-05-13	9364ee8e-a39a-11eb-8f1d-acde48001122
	Indicates that there are anomalous patterns of behavior like suspicious changes to the directory.	Generic	test	-	-	Azure Risk Detection · Azure	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	high	Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Gloria Lee, '@gleeiamglo'	2023-09-03	—	258b6593-215d-4a26-a141-c8e31c1299a6
	Detects a highly relevant Antivirus alert that reports password dumpers and stealers. (...)	Generic	stable	antivirus	-	-	Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory Security Account Manager Credential Access Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Arnim Rupp	2018-09-09	2026-06-15	78cc2dd2-7d20-4d32-93ff-057084c38b93
	Detects a highly relevant Antivirus alert that reports a web shell. (...)	Generic	test	antivirus	-	-	Persistence Server Software Component Web Shell	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Arnim Rupp	2018-09-09	2026-06-29	fdf135a2-9241-4f96-a114-bb404948f736
	Detects attempts to exploit an apache spark server via CVE-2014-6287 from a commandline perspective	Emerging	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2014-6287 CVE-2022-33891	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-07-20	—	c8a5f584-cdc8-42cc-8cce-0398e4265de3
	Detects attempts to exploit an apache spark server via CVE-2014-6287 from a weblogs perspective	Emerging	test	webserver	-	-	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2014-6287 CVE-2022-33891	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-07-19	2023-01-02	1a9a04fd-02d1-465c-abad-d733fd409f9c
	Detects an issue in apache logs that reports threading related errors	Generic	test	-	-	Apache	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application Lateral Movement Exploitation of Remote Services	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-01-22	2021-11-27	e9a2b582-3f6a-48ac-b4a1-6849cdc50b3c
	Detects when a configuration change is made to an applications AppID URI.	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	Azure Audit Logs · Azure	Credential Access Unsecured Credentials Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Stealth Valid Accounts Cloud Accounts	-	high	Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Bailey Bercik '@baileybercik'	2022-06-02	—	1b45b0d1-773f-4f23-aedc-814b759563b1
	Detects when a configuration change is made to an applications URI. (...)	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	Azure Audit Logs · Azure	Credential Access Steal Application Access Token Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Stealth Valid Accounts Cloud Accounts	-	high	Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Bailey Bercik '@baileybercik'	2022-06-02	—	0055ad1f-be85-4798-83cf-a6da17c993b3
	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.	Generic	experimental	-	windows	AppLocker	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Visual Basic Python Execution User Execution Malicious File	-	medium	heyyanu	2026-03-26	—	557e3bd3-7f21-495d-8d50-7c8bdfb8041c
	Detects when AppLocker prevents the execution of an Application, DLL, Script, MSI, or Packaged-App from running.	Generic	test	-	windows	AppLocker	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Visual Basic Python Execution User Execution Malicious File	-	medium	Pushkarev Dmitry	2020-06-28	2025-12-03	401e5d00-b944-11ea-8f9a-00163ecd60ae
	Detects DNS queries made by "AppInstaller.EXE". (...)	Generic	test	dns	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	frack113	2021-11-24	2023-11-09	7cff77e1-9663-46a3-8260-17f2e1aa9d0a
	Detects suspicious user agent strings used in APT malware in proxy logs	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Markus Neis	2019-11-12	2024-02-15	6ec820f2-e963-4801-9127-d8b2dce4d31b
	Detects indicators of APT 29 (Cozy Bear) phishing-campaign as reported by mandiant	Emerging	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), @41thexplorer	2018-11-20	2023-03-08	7453575c-a747-40b9-839b-125a0aae324b
	Detects indicators of APT 29 (Cozy Bear) phishing-campaign as reported by mandiant	Emerging	stable	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	critical	@41thexplorer	2018-11-20	2023-02-20	3a3f81ca-652c-482b-adeb-b1c804727f74
	Detects APT31 Judgement Panda activity as described in the Crowdstrike 2019 Global Threat Report	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Collection Archive Collected Data Archive via Utility Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-02-21	2023-03-10	03e2746e-2b31-42f1-ab7a-eb39365b2422
	Detects suspicious user agent string of APT40 Dropbox tool	Emerging	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Exfiltration to Cloud Storage	-	high	Thomas Patzke	2019-11-12	2023-05-18	5ba715b6-71b7-44fd-8245-f66893e81b3d
	Detects execution of GfxDownloadWrapper.exe with a URL as an argument to download file.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Victor Sergeev, oscd.community	2020-10-09	2023-10-18	eee00933-a761-4cd0-be70-c42fe91731e7
	Detects exploitation of vulnerabilities in Arcadyan routers as reported in CVE-2021-20090 and CVE-2021-20091.	Emerging	test	webserver	-	-	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2021-20091 CVE-2021-20090	critical	Bhabesh Raj	2021-08-24	2023-01-02	f0500377-bc70-425d-ac8c-e956cd906871
Splunk	The following analytic identifies the creation of a new AWS IAM policy version that allows access to all resources. (...)	Generic	stable	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Stealth Valid Accounts Cloud Accounts	-	medium	Patrick Bareiss, Splunk	2021-02-22	2026-05-13	22cc7a62-3884-48c4-82da-592b8199b72f
Splunk	The following analytic identifies when a policy is deleted in AWS. (...)	Hunting	stable	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	medium	Patrick Bareiss, Splunk	2021-04-06	2026-05-13	609ced68-d420-4ff7-8164-ae98b4b4018c
Splunk	The following analytic detects failed attempts to delete AWS IAM groups, triggered by access denial, conflicts, or non-existent groups. (...)	Anomaly	stable	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation	-	medium	Patrick Bareiss, Splunk	2024-05-22	2026-05-13	8d12f268-c567-4557-9813-f8389e235c06
Splunk	The following analytic detects the successful deletion of a group within AWS IAM, leveraging CloudTrail IAM events. (...)	Hunting	stable	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Account Manipulation Discovery Permission Groups Discovery Cloud Groups	-	medium	Patrick Bareiss, Splunk	2024-05-22	2026-05-13	1bbe54f1-93d7-4764-8a01-ddaa12ece7ac
	Detects attempts to exploit the Atlassian Bitbucket Command Injection CVE-2022-36804	Emerging	test	webserver	-	-	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2022-36804	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-09-29	2023-01-02	65c0a0ab-d675-4441-bd6b-d3db226a2685
	Detects spawning of suspicious child processes by Atlassian Confluence server which may indicate suc (...)	Emerging	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2022-26134	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-03	—	7fb14105-530e-4e2e-8cfb-99f7d8700b66
	Detects creation of persistence artifacts placed by Atomic MacOS Stealer in macOS systems. (...)	Emerging	experimental	file_event	macos	-	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Launch Daemon Stealth Hide Artifacts Hidden Files and Directories	-	high	Jason Phang Vern - Onn, Robbin Ooi Zhen Heng (Gen Digital)	2025-11-22	—	e710a880-1f18-4417-b6a0-b5afdf7e3023
	Detects events generated by user-mode applications when they call the CveEventWrite API when a known vulnerability is trying to be exploited. (...)	Generic	test	-	windows	WinEventLog Application	Impact Endpoint Denial of Service Application or System Exploitation Execution Exploitation for Client Execution Credential Access Exploitation for Credential Access Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Stealth Exploitation for Stealth Lateral Movement Exploitation of Remote Services	CVE-2020-0601	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Zach Mathis	2020-01-15	2022-10-22	48d91a3a-2363-43ba-a456-ca71ac3da5c2
	Detects kernel auto-loading of the authencesn crypto module via modprobe This occurs when user-space (...)	Emerging	experimental	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Boot or Logon Autostart Execution Kernel Modules and Extensions Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	CVE-2026-31431	high	Gene Kazimiarovich	2026-05-09	—	474b415a-d917-4f3b-8c62-9e1a0d5f7b48
	Once established within a system or network, an adversary may use automated techniques for collecting internal data.	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Collection Automated Collection	-	medium	frack113	2021-07-28	2022-12-25	c1dda054-d638-4c16-afc8-53e007f3fbc5
	Once established within a system or network, an adversary may use automated techniques for collecting internal data.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Collection Automated Collection Credential Access Unsecured Credentials Credentials In Files	-	medium	frack113	2021-07-28	2022-11-11	f576a613-2392-4067-9d1a-9345fb58d8d1

Title

Description

HAFNIUM G0125

HAFNIUM G0125

HAFNIUM MITRE reference G0125

HAFNIUM MITRE reference G0125

Standing G0125

Reach

Coverage

HAFNIUM detections G0125