Gelsemium
Also known as 狼毒草
The Gelsemium group has been active since at least 2014 and was described in the past by a few security companies. Gelsemium’s name comes from one possible translation ESET found while reading a report from VenusTech who dubbed the group 狼毒草 for the first time. It’s the name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Gelsemiaceae, Gelsemium elegans is the species that contains toxic compounds like Gelsemine, Gelsenicine and Gelsevirine, which ESET choses as names for the three components of this malware family.
Targets: Government, Electronics Manufacturers, Universities, Religious organization, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Mongolia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Iran, Iraq
CVEs in recent coverage
No CVEs named alongside this actor in the last 90 days.
Recent victims
No leak-site posts on record for this group.
Recent activity
No posts or advisories have named this actor recently.
References
- https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/06/09/gelsemium-when-threat-actors-go-gardening/
- https://www.venustech.com.cn/uploads/2018/08/231401512426.pdf
- https://hitcon.org/2016/pacific/0composition/pdf/1202/1202%20R0%200930%20an%20intelligance-driven%20approach%20to%20cyber%20defense.pdf
- https://public.gdatasoftware.com/Presse/Publikationen/Whitepaper/EN/GDATA_TooHash_CaseStudy_102014_EN_v1.pdf
- https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0141
- https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/eset_gelsemium.pdf
From the MISP threat-actor galaxy, MITRE ATT&CK and RansomLook (CC BY 4.0). Activity is any post or advisory Watch Floor collected that names the actor or one of its aliases.