Mandiant Exposes APT1 – One of China's Cyber Espionage Units – and Releases 3,000 Indicators

Today, The Mandiant® Intelligence Center™ released an unprecedented report exposing APT1's multi-year, enterprise-scale computer espionage campaign. APT1 is one of dozens of threat groups Mandiant tracks around the world and we consider it to be one of the most prolific in terms of the sheer quantity of information it has stolen.

Highlights of the report include:

• Evidence linking APT1 to China's 2nd Bureau of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department's (GSD) 3rd Department (Military Cover Designator 61398).
• A timeline of APT1 economic espionage conducted since 2006 against 141 victims across multiple industries.
• APT1's modus operandi (tools, tactics, procedures) including a compilation of videos showing actual APT1 activity.
• The timeline and details of over 40 APT1 malware families.
• The timeline and details of APT1's extensive attack infrastructure.

Mandiant is also releasing a digital appendix with more than 3,000 indicators to bolster defenses against APT1 operations. This appendix includes:

• Digital delivery of over 3,000 APT1 indicators, such as domain names, and MD5 hashes of malware.
• Thirteen (13) X.509 encryption certificates used by APT1.
• A set of APT1 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and detailed descriptions of over 40 malware families in APT1's arsenal of digital weapons.
• IOCs that can be used in conjunction with Redline™, Mandiant's free host-based investigative tool, or with Mandiant Intelligent Response® (MIR), Mandiant's commercial enterprise investigative tool.

The scale and impact of APT1's operations compelled us to write this report. The decision to publish a significant part of our intelligence about Unit 61398 was a painstaking one. What started as a "what if" discussion about our traditional non-disclosure policy quickly turned into the realization that the positive impact resulting from our decision to expose APT1 outweighed the risk of losing much of our ability to collect intelligence on this particular APT group. It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating from China, and we wanted to do our part to arm and prepare security professionals to combat the threat effectively. The issue of attribution has always been a missing link in the public's understanding of the landscape of APT cyber espionage. Without establishing a solid connection to China, there will always be room for observers to dismiss APT actions as uncoordinated, solely criminal in nature, or peripheral to larger national security and global economic concerns. We hope that this report will lead to increased understanding and coordinated action in countering APT network breaches.

We recognize that no one entity can understand the entire complex picture that many years of intense cyber espionage by a single group creates. We look forward to seeing the surge of data and conversations a report like this will likely generate.

Dan McWhorter

Managing Director, Threat Intelligence