Nitro
Also known as Covert Grove
These attackers were the subject of an extensive report by Symantec in 2011, which termed the attackers Nitro and stated: 'The goal of the attackers appears to be to collect intellectual property such as design documents, formulas, and manufacturing processes. In addition, the same attackers appear to have a lengthy operation history including attacks on other industries and organizations. Attacks on the chemical industry are merely their latest attack wave. As part of our investigations, we were also able to identify and contact one of the attackers to try and gain insights into the motivations behind these attacks.' Palo Alto Networks reported on continued activity by the attackers in 2014.
CVEs in recent coverage
- 7.8CVE-2026-119116AWS kmstool-enclave · 2 mentions with this actor
- 6.5CVE-2026-119148AWS aws-nitro-enclaves-sdk-c · 2 mentions with this actor
- 6.5CVE-2026-119086FreeRTOS FreeRTOS-Kernel · 1 mention with this actor
- 6.5CVE-2026-119117AWS amazon-kinesis-producer · 1 mention with this actor
Recent victims
No leak-site posts on record for this group.
Recent activity
- Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2026)hn · Nov 3, 2026
- Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2026)hn · Nov 3, 2026
- 🔒 Security News Digest - 2026-10-30 📊 10 updates from 6 sources: 🔹 SecurityWeek: PHP2Shell Attacks Root Palo Alto Firewalls but Fail Against WordPress https:mastodon · Oct 30, 2026
- CVE-2026-119116 and CVE-2026-119148 - Issues in AWS Nitro Enclaves SDK for Caws · Oct 30, 2026
- Discord will soon let anyone find public server messages through Googlehn · Oct 27, 2026
References
- https://paper.seebug.org/papers/APT/APT_CyberCriminal_Campagin/2011/the_nitro_attacks.pdf
- https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/new-indicators-compromise-apt-group-nitro-uncovered/
- https://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/the-significance-of-the-nitro-attacks/
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.
