Andariel

MITRE ATT&CK: G0138 View on attack.mitre.org

Aliases: Silent Chollima, PLUTONIUM, Onyx Sleet, OperationTroy, Guardian of Peace, GOP, WHOis Team, Andariel, Subgroup: Andariel, SILENT CHOLLIMA, StoneFly, Tdrop2 campaign, DarkSeoul, Black Chollima, APT45

First seen
2009-01-01 00:00:00
Origin
KP
Primary motivation
financial-gain
Sophistication
advanced
Resource level
government
Actor type
nation-state
Last IoC activity
2026-06-15 10:45:04
Profile updated
2026-07-07 11:47:46

Targeted industries: financial-services government-and-public-sector defense-and-aerospace

Targeted regions: country_code:kr

Context

Andariel is a North Korean state-sponsored threat group that has been active since at least 2009. Andariel has primarily focused its operations--which have included destructive attacks--against South Korean government agencies, military organizations, and a variety of domestic companies; they have also conducted cyber financial operations against ATMs, banks, and cryptocurrency exchanges. Andariel's notable activity includes Operation Black Mine, Operation GoldenAxe, and Campaign Rifle. Andariel is considered a sub-set of Lazarus Group, and has been attributed to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau. North Korean group definitions are known to have significant overlap, and some security researchers report all North Korean state-sponsored cyber activity under the name Lazarus Group instead of tracking clusters or subgroups.

Detection coverage

  • 1 YARA rules
  • 169 Sigma rules

Malware & tools used

  • System Network Connections Discovery (attack-pattern)
  • Exploitation for Client Execution (attack-pattern)
  • Data from Local System (attack-pattern)
  • IP Addresses (attack-pattern)
  • Drive-by Compromise (attack-pattern)
  • Process Discovery (attack-pattern)
  • Software (attack-pattern)
  • Malware (attack-pattern)
  • Malicious File (attack-pattern)
  • Spearphishing Attachment (attack-pattern)
  • Steganography (attack-pattern)
  • Ingress Tool Transfer (attack-pattern)
  • Rifdoor (malware)
  • gh0st RAT (malware)

Exploited vulnerabilities

  • CVE-2023-42793 (vulnerability)

Reports & references

  • docs.huihoo.com — Anf T07B The Art Of Attribution Identifying And Pursuing Your Cyber Adversaries Final (report)
  • Microsoft — Multiple North Korean Threat Actors Exploiting The Teamcity Cve 2023 42793 Vulnerability (report)
  • raw.githubusercontent.com — Microsoftmapping (report)
  • Microsoft — Microsoft Threat Actor Naming (report)
  • home.treasury.gov — Sm774 (report)
  • issuemakerslab.com — Research3 (report)
  • CrowdStrike — Silent Chollima (report)
  • MITRE ATT&CK — G0138 (report)
  • fsiceat.tistory.com — 2 (report)
  • web.archive.org — %5Banalysis%5Dandariel Group (report)
  • Trend Micro — New Andariel Reconnaissance Tactics Hint At Next Targets (report)

Attributed from

  • Andariel Espionage Activity (campaign)

External references