The destruction of APT3

Twelve months have passed since this blog exposed Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao, their company ‘Boyusec’ and the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) as being behind APT3. APT3 was, at the time, one of the most damaging APT attacks to hit Western companies. One year on, we take a look back at what happened after our publication.

APT3 is Boyusec, a Chinese Intelligence Contractor

In our last three posts we introduced you to APT3 and identified two individuals responsible for purchasing their domain names – Wu Yingzhuo and Dong Hao. An IP addresses in Guangdong, China was associated with some of the domains.

Both individuals have a long history of purchasing APT3 infrastructure. Who do they work for and where do their orders come from?

Who is Mr Dong?

In our last post we showed how, through WHOIS data, it is possible to identify Wu Yingzhuo, an APT3 operator who registered domain names for the group and advertised online offering help with Trojan development.

The story finished with http[.]net, a domain name that we showed was connected to APT3, and that was registered to Yingzhuo Wu. In this post we will show how the trail continues and allows us to identify a second APT3 member, Mr Dong.

Who is Mr Wu?

In our last post we introduced you to APT3 and promised to identify the individuals behind the intrusion. Today we will follow the trail left by APT3’s infrastructure procurers and will identify our first APT3 operator, Mr Wu.

Who is behind this Chinese espionage group stealing our intellectual property?

APT3 – also known as Gothic Panda, Buckeye, UPS Team and TG-0110 – was first reported in 2010 by FireEye in their report Hupigon Joins The Party. It is blamed for using a Remote Access Trojan named Pirpi in attacks against the US and UK. The Trojan is usually delivered through malicious attachments or links in spear-phishing e-mails and the group have a history of innovating new browser-based zero-day exploits. FireEye claim that it is one of the most sophisticated threat groups tracked by their Threat Intelligence arm.