An updated report on APT10's continued targeting of UK organisations.
In December 2018, the UK and its allies announced that a group known as APT10 acted on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security to carry out a malicious cyber campaign targeting intellectual property and sensitive commercial data in Europe, Asia and the US.
Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt said:
“This campaign is one of the most significant and widespread cyber intrusions against the UK and allies uncovered to date, targeting trade secrets and economies around the world.
“These activities must stop. They go against the commitments made to the UK in 2015, and, as part of the G20, not to conduct or support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property or trade secrets.
“Our message to governments prepared to enable these activities is clear: together with our allies, we will expose your actions and take other necessary steps to ensure the rule of law is upheld.”
APT10 (also known as Stone Panda, MenuPass and Red Apollo) is a threat actor acting on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security who are known to have been active since at least 2009. Since then it has targeted healthcare, defence, aerospace, government, heavy industry/mining, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and IT industries, among many other sectors, for the likely purpose of intellectual property theft. In 2017 its targeting of several global MSPs, giving it extensive access to the networks of organisations worldwide, was widely reported by the NCSC and industry partners.
The NCSC is aware of current malicious activity affecting UK organisations across a broad range of sectors, likely conducted by APT10. This activity will almost certainly have been facilitated by the group’s targeting of MSPs, as well as other outsourcing providers.
This report is an update to Version 1.0, issued to the CiSP information sharing platform on 29 August 2018 with a handling caveat of TLP AMBER. There have been minor changes to the content of the report and the mitigation advice has been updated.
