BackdoorDiplomacy
BackdoorDiplomacy is a Chinese state-linked cyberespionage threat actor. Reporting in the provided content describes it as targeting government entities, as well as high-priority telecommunications and finance organizations, with activity across Africa, the Middle East, and other regions of PRC interest. Recent reporting cited in the content describes a sustained three-year campaign against governmental organizations in Kenya, and targeting linked to South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, and Ethiopia. The content also notes overlap or a close relationship with APT15 and references overlap with Playful Taurus, Vixen Panda, NICKEL, and Ke3chang. Observed tradecraft in the provided content includes exploitation of public-facing applications and exposed services, including CVE-2020-5902 on F5 BIG-IP to drop a Linux backdoor and exploitation of misconfigured Plesk servers. The actor has been associated with web shell activity and IIS-related persistence, command and scripting interpreter use, and malware/tool upload behaviors. Additional behaviors described include obtaining and using leaked malware such as DoublePulsar, EternalBlue, EternalRocks, and EternalSynergy; using SMBTouch to identify EternalBlue-vulnerable targets; obtaining open-source reconnaissance and red-team tools for discovery and lateral movement; obfuscating tools and malware with VMProtect; detecting removable media such as USB flash drives; copying files of interest to the main drive's Recycle Bin for staging; and dropping implants in folders named for legitimate software. The content also notes that a DLL sideloading chain observed by Sophos resembled a process previously described for deployment of a Merlin Agent by BackdoorDiplomacy, and that Cluster Alpha activity in Sophos' Crimson Palace investigation aligned with Bitdefender reporting on a Middle East cyberespionage campaign attributed to BackdoorDiplomacy.
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Targeting
Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Who they target
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
- Government & Administration
- Software & Services
- Financial Services
Where they target
Geographies tied to known operations.
- 🇰🇪 Kenya
- 🇿🇦 South Africa
- 🇸🇳 Senegal
- 🇪🇹 Ethiopia
Where they're from
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
- CN
Tradecraft
42 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
Associated malware families
11 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
6 additional families tracked in Mallory.
Associated vulnerabilities
8 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 8 of them exploited in the wild.
BackdoorDiplomacy has exploited CVE-2020-5902, an F5 BIP-IP vulnerability, to drop a Linux backdoor.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
The following analytic detects attempts to exploit CVE-2022-26134, an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence... This activity is significant as it allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on the Confluence server without authentication, potentially leading to full system compromise.
3 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
Observables
19 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
Recent activity
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Listed as a threat actor associated with the PowerShell P/Invoke process injection API chain detection and related ATT&CK techniques.
Listed as a threat actor associated with web shell persistence activity in the context of this VMware Workspace ONE web shell detection.
Listed as a threat actor associated with exploitation of public-facing applications and malware/tool upload activity relevant to Confluence exploitation detection.
Listed as a threat actor associated with the TeamCity payload execution detection covering exploitation of a public-facing application, web shell persistence, and command/scripting interpreter execution.
The version that knows your environment.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.