Saint Bear · Storm-0587 · TA471 · UAC-0056 · Lorec53
Saint Bear is a Russian-nexus threat actor active since early 2021, primarily targeting entities in Ukraine and Georgia. The group is notable for a specific remote access tool, Saint Bot, and information stealer, OutSteel in campaigns. Saint Bear typically relies on phishing or web staging of malicious documents and related file types for initial access, spoofing government or related entities.[1][2]Saint Bear has previously been confused with Ember Bear operations, but analysis of behaviors, tools, and targeting indicates these are distinct clusters.
18
Techniques50th pct
8
Tactics48th pct
2
Tools & malware39th pct
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
Saint Bear clones .NET assemblies from other .NET binaries as well as cloning code signing certificates from other software to obfuscate the initial loader payload.3
Saint Bear initial loaders will also drop a malicious Windows batch file, available via open source GitHub repositories, that disables Microsoft Defender functionality.7
Saint Bear has delivered malicious Microsoft Office files containing an embedded JavaScript object that would, on execution, download and execute OutSteel and Saint Bot.8
Execution36 detection rules
Standing G1031
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
Techniques1850th pct
50th percentile · 50% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics848th pct
48th percentile · 52% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more tactics spanned.
Tools & malware239th pct
39th percentile · 61% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more tools and malware.
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 / technique21.5med55th pct
55th percentile · 55% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique1.5med26th pct
26th percentile · 74% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more atomic tests per technique.
Data comps / technique3med65% 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 18 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 successful deletion or disabling of an AWS GuardDuty detector, possibly by an attacker trying to avoid detection of its malicious activities. (...)
The following analytic detects the creation of a batch file (.bat) within the Windows system directory tree, specifically in the System32 or SysWOW64 folders. (...)