Chinese Hackers Undertaking A Global Infiltration Campaign

Uploaded on 2025-05-07 in TECHNOLOGY--Hackers, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, INTELLIGENCE-Hot Spots-China, FREE TO VIEW

A Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Group has successfully exploited critical vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances to infiltrate organisations across 12 countries and 20 industries, according the Taiwan cyber security firm TeamT5.

The campaign, active since late March 2025, exploits the CVE-2025-0282 and CVE-2025-22457 vulnerabilities' stack-based buffer overflow flaws, which have maximum CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) scores of 9.0, to deploy the SPAWNCHIMERA malware suite and establish network access.

CVSS is a standard for assessing the severity of software vulnerabilities, assigning a numerical score from 0 to 10. This score helps organisations prioritise vulnerability remediation efforts by quantifying the potential impact of a vulnerability

The attacks targeted organisations in the UK, the US, Austria, Australia, France, Spain, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan and the UAE, Targeted industries include government agencies, financial institutions, telecommunications, law firms, and intergovernmental organisations.

The attackers mapped critical infrastructure, suggesting preparations for future disruptive operations. As geopolitical tensions escalate, the incident highlights the urgent need for proactive vulnerability management and cross-sector threat intelligence sharing.

The threat actors maintained covert access to victim networks for weeks, exfiltrating sensitive data, while evading detection through multi-layered command-and-control (C2) infrastructure and log-wiping tools.

The APT group has been identified as UNC5221 which, according to research by Mandiant, is connected to the Chinese government, has successfully weaponised the Ivanti vulnerabilities to achieve unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE).

Once inside, attackers deployed SPAWNCHIMERA, a modular malware package designed specifically to exploit Ivanti appliances. The key malare components include:

SPAWNANT: A stealthy installer that bypasses integrity checks.

SPAWNMOLE: A SOCKS5 proxy for tunnelling traffic.

SPAWNSNAIL: An SSH backdoor for persistent access.

SPAWNSLOTH: A log-wiping tool to erase forensic evidence.

The malware’s dynamic patching capability allows it to modify vulnerable Ivanti components in memory, ensuring continued exploitation even after patches are applied. Security analysts at Rapid7 are reported to have confirmed the vulnerabilities’ weakness, reporting that CVE-2025-22457 initially appeared as a low-risk denial-of-service bug but was later weaponised for RCE.

Since April 2025, mass exploitation attempts have rendered many Ivanti VPN appliances unstable, with failed attacks causing widespread service disruptions. Despite Ivanti’s patches released in February, thousands of devices remain unpatched due to sluggish enterprise remediation efforts.

Mandiant warns that the SPAWNCHIMERA toolkit’s sophistication, including UNIX socket communication and obfuscated payloads, reflects China's growing focus on cyber espionage against geopolitical rivals.

TeamT5 urges affected organisations to:

Immediately apply Ivanti’s version 22.7R2.5 patches.

Conduct full network forensic analyses to identify dormant malware.

Reset VPN appliances and revoke credentials exposed during breaches.

As Chinese APTs increasingly target legacy systems, the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) required US federal agencies to patch Ivanti vulnerabilities by January 15, 2025, a deadline many missed, exacerbating the crisis.

With over 1,700 devices compromised globally and exploitation attempts surging, analysts warn that the operational consequences could continue for years.

In expert comment, Craig Watt, Strategic Threat Intelligenec Consultant with Quorum Cyber said "Chinese state-sponsored threat groups are continuing to leverage vulnerability exploitation for initial access, with secondary operations involving lateral movement, maintaining persistence and quickly exfiltrating data from victim environments.

These types of operations will likely ramp up throughout the remainder of 2025 as Chinese actors create innovative attack chains to prepare for the next wave of long-term espionage targeting of Western assets to support its upcoming 15th 5-Year Plan starting at the beginning of 2026." Watt concludes

The campaign illustrates the risks of unpatched network edge devices, particularly VPN gateways, and reinforces the critical importance of proactive cyber security measures in mitigating risks posed by increasingly sophisticated nation-state level threat actors.

Varutra | Security Online

Image: Ideogram

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