POISON CARP
Also known as Evil Eye, Red Dev 16, Earth Empusa
Between November 2018 and May 2019, senior members of Tibetan groups received malicious links in individually tailored WhatsApp text exchanges with operators posing as NGO workers, journalists, and other fake personas. The links led to code designed to exploit web browser vulnerabilities to install spyware on iOS and Android devices, and in some cases to OAuth phishing pages. This campaign was carried out by what appears to be a single operator that we call POISON CARP.
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://citizenlab.ca/2019/09/poison-carp-tibetan-groups-targeted-with-1-click-mobile-exploits/
- https://www.volexity.com/blog/2019/09/02/digital-crackdown-large-scale-surveillance-and-exploitation-of-uyghurs/
- https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/20/f/new-android-spyware-actionspy-revealed-via-phishing-attacks-from-earth-empusa.html
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.