Earth Yako
Aliases: Operation RestyLink, Enelink
- Primary motivation
- espionage
- Sophistication
- advanced
- Resource level
- organization
- Actor type
- nation-state
- Profile updated
- 2026-07-07 12:13:57
Targeted industries: education-and-nonprofits government-and-public-sector
Targeted regions: country_code:jp
Context
Earth Yako is a threat actor that has been actively targeting researchers in academic organizations and think tanks in Japan. They use spearphishing emails with malicious attachments to gain initial access to their targets' systems. Earth Yako's objectives and patterns suggest a possible connection to a Chinese APT group, but conclusive proof of their nationality is lacking. They have been observed using various malware delivery methods and techniques, such as the use of Winword.exe for DLL Hijacking.
Reports & references
- Trend Micro — Invitation To Secret Event Uncovering Earth Yako Campaigns (report)