ESET APT Activity Report Q4 2025–Q1 2026

ESET published its APT Activity Report covering October 2025 through March 2026 on 28 May 2026 (ESET WeLiveSecurity, 2026-05-28). EU- and NATO-relevant findings for public-sector defenders: Sandworm (Russia/GRU) intensified destructive winter operations against Ukrainian infrastructure and targeted a Polish energy company in December 2025 — a NATO member state critical-infrastructure attack attributed with medium confidence; this represents continued Sandworm willingness to conduct wiper operations beyond Ukraine's borders. Sednit/APT28 deployed Covenant and BeardShell implants against Ukrainian military, drone manufacturers, and logistics companies. Lazarus Group ran Operation DreamJob targeting European drone manufacturers — ESET assesses this as technology acquisition for North Korea's weapons programme. Operation DangerousPassword compromised the axios JavaScript library (100+ million weekly npm downloads), injecting trojanised code and demonstrating ongoing North Korea supply-chain interest in developer ecosystem targeting. UNC5221 (China-nexus) deployed a new implant assessed as part of the SPAWN toolset, specifically targeting Ivanti VPN appliances (Connect Secure, Policy Secure); organisations running unpatched Ivanti VPN should audit for SPAWN toolset artefacts including SPAWNANT installer, SPAWNMOLE tunneller, SPAWNSNAIL SSH backdoor, and SPAWNSLOTH log-tampering utility. The report PDF is available at https://web-assets.esetstatic.com/wls/en/papers/threat-reports/eset-apt-activity-report-q4-2025-q1-2026.pdf. Key defender actions: (a) confirm Sandworm wiper detection capability (file-destruction followed by MBR/VBR overwrite patterns, VSS deletion); (b) review Ivanti VPN logs for SPAWN footprints per CISA AA24-060A indicators; (c) audit npm dependency trees for axios versions <1.8.0 or 0.x released after the DangerousPassword campaign window.

W19 long-running record (item:qilin-agenda-raas-die-linke-confirms-q2-2026-german-activity) tracked Qilin's continued German activity. W20 status: Check Point's April 2026 report confirms Qilin leads all RaaS operators at 15% of 707 published attacks in April; Germany's share at 5% of global ransomware victims is the elevated-DACH-exposure data point (Qilin DLS German-victim count cited by W1 horizon research as approximately 65 as of 2026-05-16 — uncorroborated leak-site enumeration that should be treated as a lower bound); Die Linke (German political party) confirmed Qilin compromise in March 2026 (W19 carry-over); no new Swiss-specific victim named in window (Check Point Research).

The ESAs (EBA, EIOPA, ESMA) designated 19 critical ICT third-party providers (CTPPs) in November 2025; the first complete DORA oversight cycle is underway in 2026. Joint Examination Teams (JETs) established in Q1 2026 are conducting initial examination activities that may result in recommendations and follow-ups. Financial-sector entities using the 19 designated CTPPs are now subject to enhanced regulatory scrutiny of contractual ICT arrangements, subcontracting chains, and incident-reporting flows under DORA Articles 26–44. The designated CTPPs are themselves subject to direct ESA oversight including required cooperation with JET examinations and expected to demonstrate ICT risk-management governance, resilience testing (TLPT for critical-function systems), and supply-chain transparency. Swiss financial institutions supervised by FINMA that use EU-designated CTPPs should confirm their contractual arrangements comply with DORA Chapter V (ICT third-party risk management) as enforced via EU subsidiaries (ESMA press release; PwC Legal).

The cross-day pattern most visible in 2026-W19 is the ShinyHunters / WorldLeaks operator family's role in four parallel third-party / SaaS-tier compromises with European footprint, all riding the third-party-analytics → cloud-data-warehouse → tenant-data-exfiltration pivot rather than direct attack on the victim's infrastructure. The sequence: Vimeo / Anodot (first covered 2026-05-07) — Vimeo's official statement confirmed customer email addresses were affected via a third-party security incident involving Anodot, an analytics vendor integrated with Vimeo's infrastructure; the Snowflake-and-BigQuery cloud-data-warehouse pivot is attributed to ShinyHunters' extortion claim per BleepingComputer (not Vimeo's own confirmation); BleepingComputer reports approximately 119,000 email addresses exposed; ShinyHunters published the dataset after Vimeo declined extortion (Vimeo official blog, 2026-04-27 · BleepingComputer, 2026-05-06 · The Register, 2026-05-05). Inditex (Zara) (first covered 2026-05-09) — Have I Been Pwned confirmed 197,400 EU customer email addresses exposed via the same Anodot → BigQuery pivot; Inditex confirmed access to email, geographic location, order IDs, support ticket content; ShinyHunters dumped ~140 GB after Inditex declined (SecurityAffairs, 2026-05-08 · BleepingComputer, 2026-05-08 · daily 2026-05-09). ADT Inc. (first covered 2026-05-06) — SEC 8-K filed 2026-04-24 disclosed unauthorised access to certain cloud environments; ShinyHunters claimed the initial-access vector was vishing on an employee Okta SSO account followed by Salesforce data exfiltration (ADT did not confirm the vector) (ADT Newsroom, 2026-04-24 · daily 2026-05-06). Instructure / Canvas (first covered 2026-05-06; expanded each subsequent day — see separate H3 below).

The lesson under PD-11 (less is more) for Swiss / EU public-sector readers: third-party analytics, monitoring, evaluation, and observability integrations holding OAuth or service-account access to production data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) are a structural supply-chain attack surface that vendor-assessment checklists routinely miss. Audit delegated access grants for analytics tooling; enforce token scoping and expiry; require provider-side anomaly alerts; and treat any tenant-to-tenant credential propagation pattern (the four incidents above are all that pattern) as warranting a tabletop on revocation timing — Vimeo revoked privileged credentials and access tokens within hours of detection, which is the right reference performance.

Current state: GTIG's Europe data-leak landscape (§ 6) documented Qilin tripling Q3 2025 operational tempo in Germany; Die Linke (Germany federal political party) confirmed Qilin encryption with 1.5 TB exfiltrated (covered 2026-05-08), state DPA notified — Qilin German activity continues into 2026-Q2. No public-claim shift or victim-list expansion beyond Die Linke this week. Outstanding question: whether Qilin's targeting of political and civil-society organisations expands into other 2026 EU election cycles.