Star Blizzard · SEABORGIUM · Callisto Group · TA446 · COLDRIVER
Star Blizzard is a cyber espionage and influence group originating in Russia that has been active since at least 2019. Star Blizzard campaigns align closely with Russian state interests and have included persistent phishing and credential theft against academic, defense, government, NGO, and think tank organizations in NATO countries, particularly the US and the UK.[1][2][3][4]
20
Techniques53rd pct
10
Tactics59th pct
1
Tool or malwareBottom 23%
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
Star Blizzard has abused email forwarding rules to monitor the activities of a victim, steal information, and maintain persistent access after compromised credentials are reset.910
Star Blizzard has used EvilGinx to steal the session cookies of victims directed to
phishing domains.12
Credential Access3 detection rules
Standing G1033
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
Techniques2053rd pct
53rd percentile · 53% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics1059th pct
59th percentile · 59% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tactics spanned or fewer.
Tool or malware1Bottom 23%
23rd percentile · 77% 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 / technique1.5medBottom 7%
7th percentile · 93% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique0medBottom 16%
16th percentile · 84% 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 20 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
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.
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.
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.
Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Gloria Lee, '@gleeiamglo'
2023-09-03
—
19128e5e-4743-48dc-bd97-52e5775af817
Splunk
The following analytic detects unusual authentication activity in Azure AD, specifically when a single user account has over 8 authentication attempts using 3+ unique application IDs and 5+ unique user agents within a short period. (...)
Detects a successful login to the Microsoft Intune Company Portal which could allow bypassing Conditional Access Policies and InTune device trust using a tool like TokenSmith.
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 the creation of privileged user accounts on Cisco IOS devices, which could indicate an attacker establishing backdoor access. (...)
This analytic correlates risk events between privileged account creation on Cisco IOS devices and HTTP requests to privileged execution paths such as `/level/15/exec/-/*`. (...)