Webworm (China-aligned) shifts to EU government targets — EchoCreep (Discord C2) and GraphWorm (Microsoft Graph / OneDrive C2) backdoors documented by ESET, with Belgian, Italian, Serbian, Polish and Spanish governmental victims
ESET Research published a technical analysis on 2026-05-20 of Webworm — also tracked as FishMonger / Aquatic Panda / SixLittleMonkeys / Space Pirates — documenting a 2025 campaign pivot to European governmental organisations in Belgium, Italy, Serbia and Poland, plus a South African university; the group has abandoned its prior primary backdoors (Trochilus RAT, McRat / 9002 RAT) in favour of two new custom implants — EchoCreep (which ESET describes as written in Go) and GraphWorm (ESET WeLiveSecurity, 2026-05-20). EchoCreep uses Discord as a bidirectional C2 channel, encoding commands with base64 + AES-CBC-128; it creates per-victim Discord channels named after the victim IP (or IP+hostname), supports file upload/download and cmd.exe command execution, and ESET recovered 433 decrypted Discord messages dating back to 2024-03-21 from four unique victim channels (T1102.002 Web Service: Bidirectional Communication, T1059.003 Windows Command Shell). GraphWorm is more capable: an implant (implementation language not stated in the ESET write-up) that authenticates against the Microsoft Graph API and uses per-victim OneDrive directories for C2, with /createUploadSession for large-file exfiltration and AES-256-CBC + base64 encoding on uploaded data (T1102.002, T1071.001 Application Layer Protocol — Web Protocols); it persists at logon and spawns cmd.exe sessions under the implant's process context. The custom proxy toolkit added in 2025 includes WormFrp (a modified frp that pulls its config from a compromised AWS S3 bucket wamanharipethe.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com), ChainWorm (multi-hop chaining), SmuxProxy, and WormSocket (socket.io-based proxy); a SharpSecretsdump Impacket-look-alike credential dumper was uploaded to the same S3 bucket in October 2025 (T1003.001 OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory) (ESET, 2026-05-20; The Hacker News, 2026-05-20). Files exfiltrated from victims and staged in the S3 bucket included virtual-machine snapshots from an Italian governmental entity and an mRemoteNG connection-configuration file plus a Microsoft Visio infrastructure diagram from a Spanish governmental entity — both documents that materially aid follow-on intrusion. Initial-access tradecraft documented against Serbian targets used CVE-2017-7692 (SquirrelMail post-auth RCE), implying credential theft preceded webmail exploitation. Why it matters to us: the cloud-API C2 design (Discord, Microsoft Graph) blends with legitimate enterprise traffic and defeats domain / URL block-lists. Detection concept — alert on Sysmon EID 3 outbound HTTPS to discord.com/api/* or graph.microsoft.com from process trees whose parent is not the expected first-party application (Discord.exe, Teams.exe, OneDrive.exe, Office); correlate Graph API non-interactive sign-ins in Entra ID for app registrations with no enterprise approval path; flag cmd.exe spawned by long-running services with no interactive user context. Hardening — Conditional Access for the Microsoft Graph application restricting non-managed device sign-ins; block socket.io and Discord WebSocket outbound at the SWG for server workloads that have no business reason; force first-party-only WebSocket egress on government-segment workstations.
ATT&CK mapping
4 techniques mapped from the cited reporting · MITRE ATT&CK v19.2
Execution TA0002
T1059.003Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell
Adversaries may abuse the Windows command shell for execution. The Windows command shell (cmd) is the primary command prompt on Windows systems. The Windows command prompt can be used to control almost any aspect of a system, with various permission levels required for different subsets of commands. The command prompt can be invoked remotely via Remote Services such as SSH.
Credential Access TA0006
T1003.001OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory
Adversaries may attempt to access credential material stored in the process memory of the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS). After a user logs on, the system generates and stores a variety of credential materials in LSASS process memory. These credential materials can be harvested by an administrative user or SYSTEM and used to conduct Lateral Movement using Use Alternate Authentication Material.
Command and Control TA0011
T1071.001Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols
Adversaries may communicate using application layer protocols associated with web traffic to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. Commands to the remote system, and often the results of those commands, will be embedded within the protocol traffic between the client and server.
T1102.002Web Service: Bidirectional Communication
Adversaries may use an existing, legitimate external Web service as a means for sending commands to and receiving output from a compromised system over the Web service channel. Compromised systems may leverage popular websites and social media to host command and control (C2) instructions. Those infected systems can then send the output from those commands back over that Web service channel. The return traffic may occur in a variety of ways, depending on the Web service being utilized. For example, the return traffic may take the form of the compromised system posting a comment on a forum, issuing a pull request to development project, updating a document hosted on a Web service, or by sending a Tweet.
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