Threat actor
BRONZE SPIRAL
Last fetched
BRONZE SPIRAL is a threat actor tracked in WhisperGraph's MITRE ATT&CK corpus, observed using 0 techniques.
Description
In December 2020, the IT management software provider SolarWinds announced that an unidentified threat actor had exploited a vulnerability in their Orion Platform software to deploy a web shell dubbed SUPERNOVA. CTU researchers track the operators of the SUPERNOVA web shell as BRONZE SPIRAL and assess with low confidence that the group is of Chinese origin. SUPERNOVA was likely deployed through exploitation of CVE-2020-10148, and CTU researchers observed post-exploitation reconnaissance commands roughly 30 minutes before the web shell was deployed. This may have been indicative of the threat actor conducting scan-and-exploit activity and then triaging for victims of particular interest, before deploying SUPERNOVA and attempting to dump credentials and move laterally. BRONZE SPIRAL has been associated with previous intrusions involving the targeting of ManageEngine servers, maintenance of long-term access to periodically harvest credentials and exfiltrate data, and espionage or theft of intellectual property. The threat group makes extensive use of native system tools and 'living off the land' techniques.
Techniques by tactic
No ATT&CK techniques are recorded for BRONZE SPIRAL in WhisperGraph.
Attributed infrastructure
None published. WhisperGraph carries no ATTRIBUTED_TO edge to BRONZE SPIRAL today — this states the absence of a published link, not that BRONZE SPIRAL has no infrastructure.
References
- https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/solarstorm-supernova
- https://www.guidepointsecurity.com/blog/supernova-solarwinds-net-webshell-analysis
- https://www.secureworks.com/blog/supernova-web-shell-deployment-linked-to-spiral-threat-group
- https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/solarwinds-understanding-detecting-the-supernova-webshell-trojan
- https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/analysis-reports/ar21-027a
- https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/analysis-reports/ar21-112a
© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.
Related pages
Pivot from BRONZE SPIRAL into its techniques, tactics and any attributed infrastructure.
Queries
Resolves the slug to this actor, merging every duplicate node sharing the same name.
MATCH (a:ACTOR)
WHERE a.name =~ $pattern OR any(x IN a.aliases WHERE x =~ $pattern)
RETURN a.id AS id, a.name AS name, a.aliases AS aliases, a.description AS description,
a.references AS references, a.campaigns AS campaigns
LIMIT 25Run yourself →Techniques this actor uses, grouped by the tactic each one serves.
MATCH (a:ACTOR {name: $name})-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN)
OPTIONAL MATCH (t)-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN t.id AS techniqueId, t.name AS techniqueName, tac.id AS tacticId, tac.name AS tacticName
LIMIT 1000Run yourself →Infrastructure publicly attributed to this actor.
MATCH (n)-[:ATTRIBUTED_TO]->(a:ACTOR {name: $name})
RETURN labels(n)[0] AS kind, n.name AS name
LIMIT 25Run yourself →Or query Whisper from your own LLM workflow via the Whisper MCP server.