KINWILDER

TA2101

No sourced public emblem in this profile.

reference profile · reported nexus: RU (not nationality)

Proofpoint researchers detected campaigns from a relatively new actor, tracked internally as TA2101, targeting German companies and organizations to deliver and install backdoor malware. The actor initiated their campaigns impersonating the Bundeszentralamt fur Steuern, the German Federal Ministry of Finance, with lookalike domains, verbiage, and stolen branding in the emails. For their campaigns in Germany, the actor chose Cobalt Strike, a commercially licensed software tool that is generally used for penetration testing and emulates the type of backdoor framework used by Metasploit, a similar penetration testing tool. Proofpoint researchers have also observed this actor distributing Maze ransomware, employing similar social engineering techniques to those it uses for Cobalt Strike, while also targeting organizations in Italy and impersonating the Agenzia Delle Entrate, the Italian Revenue Agency. We have also recently observed the actor targeting organizations in the United States using the IcedID banking Trojan while impersonating the United States Postal Service (USPS).

Source-reported aliases: Maze Team, TWISTED SPIDER, GOLD VILLAGE, Storm-0216, DEV-0216, UNC2198, TUNNEL SPIDER. Associations do not prove equivalence.

Target geography

Catalog-listed countries (associations, not attack counts): No country-level metadata

No bound claim-post feed for this label.

Historical casebook

No dated record curated yet; absence does not establish inactivity.

Planned Kinwilder coverage

Tentative editorial review windows, contingent on evidence and review; not promised publication dates or predictions of attacks.

No assigned review window.

References

Pinned source catalog

https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/ta2101-plays-government-imposter-distribute-malware-german-italian-and-us

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/double-trouble-ransomware-data-leak-extortion-part-1/

https://adversary.crowdstrike.com/adversary/twisted-spider/

https://analyst1.com/file-assets/RANSOM-MAFIA-ANALYSIS-OF-THE-WORLD%E2%80%99S-FIRST-RANSOMWARE-CARTEL.pdf

https://www.secureworks.com/blog/how-cyber-adversaries-are-adapting-to-exploit-the-global-pandemic

https://www.cysecurity.news/2023/12/twisted-spiders-dangerous-cactus.html

https://x.com/MsftSecIntel/status/1730383711437283757

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/melting-unc2198-icedid-to-ransomware-operations

https://youtu.be/U7p0J8aMZhM?t=193

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