Turla
Also known as Snake, VENOMOUS Bear, Group 88, Waterbug, WRAITH, Uroburos, Pfinet, TAG_0530, KRYPTON, Hippo Team, Pacifier APT, Popeye, SIG23, IRON HUNTER, MAKERSMARK, ATK13, G0010, ITG12, Blue Python, SUMMIT
A 2014 Guardian article described Turla as: 'Dubbed the Turla hackers, initial intelligence had indicated western powers were key targets, but it was later determined embassies for Eastern Bloc nations were of more interest. Embassies in Belgium, Ukraine, China, Jordan, Greece, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Poland, and Germany were all attacked, though researchers from Kaspersky Lab and Symantec could not confirm which countries were the true targets. In one case from May 2012, the office of the prime minister of a former Soviet Union member country was infected, leading to 60 further computers being affected, Symantec researchers said. There were some other victims, including the ministry for health of a Western European country, the ministry for education of a Central American country, a state electricity provider in the Middle East and a medical organisation in the US, according to Symantec. It is believed the group was also responsible for a much - documented 2008 attack on the US Central Command. The attackers - who continue to operate - have ostensibly sought to carry out surveillance on targets and pilfer data, though their use of encryption across their networks has made it difficult to ascertain exactly what the hackers took.Kaspersky Lab, however, picked up a number of the attackers searches through their victims emails, which included terms such as Nato and EU energy dialogue Though attribution is difficult to substantiate, Russia has previously been suspected of carrying o
Targets: Government, Military, France, Romania, Kazakhstan, Poland, Tajikistan, Russia, United States, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India, Belarus, Netherlands, Iran
CVEs in recent coverage
- 8.4CVE-2025-8088KEVRARLAB WinRAR · 1 mention with this actor
Recent victims
No leak-site posts on record for this group.
Recent activity
- Happy to announce that announce my talk FrostyMorph Friends: Reverse Engineering Secret Blizzard's .NET Arsenal was accepted as an on-demand session at Blacmastodon · Nov 5, 2026
- # ESETresearch APT Activity Report (Apr–Sep 2026): Russia-aligned APTs continued targeting 🇺🇦 Ukrainian defense, government, and infrastructure entities. # Gamastodon · Oct 30, 2026
- LABScon25 Replay | Gamaredon x Turla: Unveiling a 2025 Espionage Alliance Targeting Ukraineblog · Jun 2, 2026
References
- https://www.circl.lu/pub/tr-25/
- https://securelist.com/introducing-whitebear/81638/
- https://securelist.com/the-epic-turla-operation/65545/
- https://www.cfr.org/interactive/cyber-operations/turla
- https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/26cyber.html
- https://securelist.com/blog/research/67962/the-penquin-turla-2/
- https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/moonlight-maze-the-lessons/6713/
- https://www2.fireeye.com/rs/848-DID-242/images/rpt-witchcoven.pdf
- https://securelist.com/analysis/publications/65545/the-epic-turla-operation/
- https://threatpost.com/linux-modules-connected-to-turla-apt-discovered/109765/
- https://securelist.com/satellite-turla-apt-command-and-control-in-the-sky/72081/
- https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/05/22/turla-mosquito-shift-towards-generic-tools/
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.
