Volt Typhoon

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

Volt Typhoon

Volt Typhoon is a Chinese state-sponsored group active since at least mid-2021, focused on pre-positioning inside US critical infrastructure. It relies on living-off-the-land techniques and compromised home and small-office routers rather than custom malware, which makes its activity hard to separate from normal administration.

Country:

China

Category:

Critical infrastructure

First seen

2021

Latest IOC

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Names and aliases

Group profile

Attack lifecycle

Malware and tooling

IOCs

Notable campaigns

NAMES AND ALIASES

The living-off-the-land infrastructure actor

Volt Typhoon is tracked by most vendors as a pre-positioning actor rather than a data thief. The names below map to one entry among the threat actors we follow, so a VOLTZITE advisory and a Bronze Silhouette report line up as one group.

GROUP PROFILE

Pre-positioning, not data theft

Volt Typhoon's goal is access, not immediate theft. US agencies assess that the group is building the ability to disrupt communications, energy, water and transportation systems during a future crisis, especially anything that would slow a US response in the Indo-Pacific.

Our record places its targeting on US critical infrastructure, including Guam, across communications, energy and transportation. It sits alongside Salt Typhoon in the set of China-nexus "Typhoon" actors we track, though the two have different missions.

What sets it apart is method. The group lives off built-in Windows tools, routes traffic through compromised routers, and keeps almost nothing on disk, so defenders see valid accounts and normal binaries instead of malware.

Facts:

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Victims reported in our records and posts:

ATTACK LIFECYCLE

Edge devices in, living off the land inside

The stages below come from Volt Typhoon activity in posts we track on our IOC Hunter feed.

Initial Access

Spear-phishing remains the front door. In the 2026 campaign Hunt.io tracked as Operation Neusploit, APT28 sent convincing spear-phishing from already-compromised government accounts and abused a Microsoft Office security bypass (CVE-2026-21509) to kick off a fileless chain. A separate June 2026 cluster delivered the LameHug malware through spear-phishing ZIP archives using double-extension lures.

Initial Access

MALWARE AND TOOLING

Web shells, proxies and router botnets

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

Edge appliances and SD-WAN

CVE-2026-21509

A Microsoft Office security bypass used to open the fileless chain in Operation Neusploit, and again in the PixyNetLoader intrusion chain. Both campaigns paired the exploit with spear-phishing from compromised accounts rather than mass exploitation.

CVE-2026-21509

RECENT {{name}} IOCS

Latest IOCs

We currently track - IP indicators, - hosts, and - SHA256 hashes for Akira across - intelligence posts, with the most recent indicator dated -. The sample below is limited to indicators from the latest posts. It is not the full set.

Showing a sample of recent indicators

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NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

Router botnets and an SD-WAN zero-day

The reporting tracks an actor that rotates through edge devices and keeps rebuilding its relay infrastructure.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

Track {{name}} across campaigns, IOCs and infrastructure

This page shows a sample of recent indicators and recent campaigns. Sign up free to pivot through

Track {{name}} across campaigns, IOCs and infrastructure

This page shows a sample of recent indicators and recent campaigns. Sign up free to pivot through