Webworm

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

Webworm

Space Pirates

Webworm is a China-aligned espionage group that shifted its targeting from Asia toward European government entities. It abuses legitimate cloud services for command-and-control, using the GraphWorm backdoor over Microsoft Graph and OneDrive and the EchoCreep backdoor over Discord, paired with custom proxy tools to hide traffic inside normal cloud flows.

China

Government / Research

First seen

2017

Latest IOC

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

Webworm, Space Pirates and Erudite Mogwai

Webworm is tracked under a few names tied to overlapping China-aligned clusters. It maps to one entry among the China-aligned espionage groups we track, and its tooling and targeting overlap with crews like APT41.

GROUP PROFILE

Cloud-native C2 against government targets

Webworm runs cyber espionage with a strong preference for blending into legitimate cloud traffic. By routing C2 through OneDrive and Discord, it reduces the need for dedicated attacker infrastructure and complicates detection.

Our record places its origin as China and ties it to espionage against government and research targets. ESET documented a 2025 to 2026 shift toward multiple European government entities and a South African university.

The group deploys GraphWorm, a backdoor that uses the Microsoft Graph API and OneDrive as a dead drop, and EchoCreep, which uses the Discord API, alongside a family of custom proxy and tunneling tools built on legacy backdoors like 9002 RAT and Trochilus.

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

Access into OneDrive and Discord C2

The stages below come from Webworm 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

GraphWorm, EchoCreep and custom proxies

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

ProxyShell Exchange exploitation

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

Webworm

IOCS FROM HUNT.IO PLATFORM

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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Webworm

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete

Webworm

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

GraphWorm and OneDrive dead drops

Recent reporting tracks the group's cloud-abusing backdoors.

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.