UAT-7290 targets high-value telecommunications infrastructure in South Asia

Talos assesses with high confidence that UAT-7290 is a sophisticated threat actor falling under the China-nexus of Advanced Persistent Threat actors (APTs). UAT-7290 primarily targets telecommunications providers in South Asia. However, in recent months we have also seen UAT-7290 expand their targeting into Southeastern Europe.

In addition to conducting espionage focused attacks where UAT-7290 burrows deep inside a victim enterprise’s network infrastructure, their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) and tooling suggests that this actor also establishes Operational Relay Box (ORBs) nodes. The ORB infrastructure may then be used by other China-nexus actors in their malicious operations, signifying UAT-7290’s dual role as an espionage motivated threat actor as well as an initial access group.

Active since at least 2022, UAT-7290 has an expansive arsenal of tooling, including open-source malware, custom developed malware, and payloads for 1-day vulnerabilities in popular edge networking products. UAT-7290 primarily leverages a Linux based malware suite but may also utilize Windows based bespoke implants such as RedLeaves or Shadowpad commonly linked to China-nexus threat actors.

Read more at Talos Intelligence