China-Linked Threat Actor Targets U.S. Non-Profit with Legacy Exploits
Summary
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A China-linked threat actor targeted a U.S. non-profit organization in April 2025, leveraging multiple legacy vulnerabilities to gain persistent access. The attackers used exploits like CVE-2022-26134, CVE-2021-44228, and others to establish a foothold, then employed scheduled tasks and legitimate binaries to maintain persistence and communicate with a command-and-control server. The activity aligns with broader Chinese espionage efforts against U.S. entities involved in policy issues.
Timeline
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07.11.2025 18:07 1 articles · 3d ago
China-Linked Threat Actor Targets U.S. Non-Profit with Legacy Exploits
In April 2025, a China-linked threat actor targeted a U.S. non-profit organization using multiple legacy vulnerabilities to gain persistent access. The attackers leveraged exploits like CVE-2022-26134 and CVE-2021-44228 to establish a foothold, then used scheduled tasks and legitimate binaries to maintain persistence and communicate with a command-and-control server. The activity aligns with broader Chinese espionage efforts against U.S. entities involved in policy issues.
Show sources
- From Log4j to IIS, China’s Hackers Turn Legacy Bugs into Global Espionage Tools — thehackernews.com — 07.11.2025 18:07
Information Snippets
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The attack began on April 5, 2025, with mass scanning efforts using exploits like CVE-2022-26134 (Atlassian), CVE-2021-44228 (Apache Log4j), and others.
First reported: 07.11.2025 18:071 source, 1 articleShow sources
- From Log4j to IIS, China’s Hackers Turn Legacy Bugs into Global Espionage Tools — thehackernews.com — 07.11.2025 18:07
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On April 16, 2025, the attackers executed curl commands and netstat to test connectivity and gather network information.
First reported: 07.11.2025 18:071 source, 1 articleShow sources
- From Log4j to IIS, China’s Hackers Turn Legacy Bugs into Global Espionage Tools — thehackernews.com — 07.11.2025 18:07
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The attackers set up persistence using scheduled tasks to execute msbuild.exe and csc.exe, communicating with a C2 server at 38.180.83[.]166.
First reported: 07.11.2025 18:071 source, 1 articleShow sources
- From Log4j to IIS, China’s Hackers Turn Legacy Bugs into Global Espionage Tools — thehackernews.com — 07.11.2025 18:07
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The attackers used a DLL loader (sbamres.dll) previously linked to Chinese threat groups like Space Pirates and Salt Typhoon.
First reported: 07.11.2025 18:071 source, 1 articleShow sources
- From Log4j to IIS, China’s Hackers Turn Legacy Bugs into Global Espionage Tools — thehackernews.com — 07.11.2025 18:07
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The attackers targeted domain controllers, aiming to spread across the network.
First reported: 07.11.2025 18:071 source, 1 articleShow sources
- From Log4j to IIS, China’s Hackers Turn Legacy Bugs into Global Espionage Tools — thehackernews.com — 07.11.2025 18:07