TA2101
Also known as Maze Team, TWISTED SPIDER, GOLD VILLAGE, Storm-0216, DEV-0216, UNC2198, TUNNEL SPIDER
Proofpoint researchers detected campaigns from a relatively new actor, tracked internally as TA2101, targeting German companies and organizations to deliver and install backdoor malware. The actor initiated their campaigns impersonating the Bundeszentralamt fur Steuern, the German Federal Ministry of Finance, with lookalike domains, verbiage, and stolen branding in the emails. For their campaigns in Germany, the actor chose Cobalt Strike, a commercially licensed software tool that is generally used for penetration testing and emulates the type of backdoor framework used by Metasploit, a similar penetration testing tool. Proofpoint researchers have also observed this actor distributing Maze ransomware, employing similar social engineering techniques to those it uses for Cobalt Strike, while also targeting organizations in Italy and impersonating the Agenzia Delle Entrate, the Italian Revenue Agency. We have also recently observed the actor targeting organizations in the United States using the IcedID banking Trojan while impersonating the United States Postal Service (USPS).
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.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/ta2101-plays-government-imposter-distribute-malware-german-italian-and-us
- https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/double-trouble-ransomware-data-leak-extortion-part-1/
- https://adversary.crowdstrike.com/adversary/twisted-spider/
- https://analyst1.com/file-assets/RANSOM-MAFIA-ANALYSIS-OF-THE-WORLD%E2%80%99S-FIRST-RANSOMWARE-CARTEL.pdf
- https://www.secureworks.com/blog/how-cyber-adversaries-are-adapting-to-exploit-the-global-pandemic
- http://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-profiles/gold-village
- https://www.cysecurity.news/2023/12/twisted-spiders-dangerous-cactus.html
- https://x.com/MsftSecIntel/status/1730383711437283757
- https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/melting-unc2198-icedid-to-ransomware-operations
- https://youtu.be/U7p0J8aMZhM?t=193
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.