Cisco Talos: China-nexus UAT-7810 expands its ORB network with LONGLEASH/DOGLEASH/JARLEASH via unpatched Ruckus and ASUS routers
Cisco Talos profiled UAT-7810, a China-nexus actor Talos assesses with high confidence is tasked with building and maintaining Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks — relay/proxy infrastructure built from compromised networking gear that secondary China-nexus APTs use to launder the origin of operations against high-value targets (Cisco Talos, 2026-07-07). Talos names UAT-5918 — previously documented targeting Taiwanese critical infrastructure — as one such downstream consumer. Initial access is exploitation of known, unpatched vulnerabilities in Ruckus wireless routers (CVE-2020-22653, CVE-2020-22658, CVE-2023-25717) and ASUS AiCloud routers (CVE-2025-2492), a tactic UAT-7810 has used since 2025 rather than a fresh zero-day (T1190). The malware suite, internally "ff-agent", now includes LONGLEASH — an enhanced successor to the SHORTLEASH backdoor adding reverse-shell and HTTP/DNS/SOCKS/TCP/ICMP/UDP multi-protocol proxying (T1090.003) — plus DOGLEASH, a passive C-based Linux backdoor, and JARLEASH, a Java-based admin tool for file management and FTP/SFTP access; it is built with Boost.Asio, custom protobuf encoding and MbedTLS TLS proxying, compiled for MIPS/ARM/x64, and self-deletes if tampering or a suspicious connection is detected (T1070).
Talos assesses with high confidence that UAT-7810 is a China-nexus threat actor based on the infrastructure that it provides to secondary China-nexus APTs such as UAT-5918.
Talos has observed UAT-7810 primarily exploit known vulnerabilities in unpatched Ruckus wireless routers, a tactic UAT-7810 has used since 2025.
Defender actions
- Patch or retire EoL Ruckus wireless APs and ASUS AiCloud routers exposed to CVE-2020-22653/-22658, CVE-2023-25717 and CVE-2025-2492; disable unneeded remote-management interfaces on edge/CPE devices.
- Baseline and alert on multi-protocol relay/fan-out behaviour (simultaneous HTTP/DNS/SOCKS/TCP/ICMP/UDP) from a single consumer-grade router or AP; treat inbound connections from residential/SOHO ranges into VPN/remote-access portals as a stronger signal than IP reputation alone.
ATT&CK mapping
3 techniques mapped from the cited reporting · MITRE ATT&CK v19.2
Initial Access TA0001
T1190Exploit Public-Facing Application
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network. The weakness in the system can be a software bug, a temporary glitch, or a misconfiguration.
Stealth TA0005
T1070Indicator Removal
Adversaries may selectively delete or modify artifacts generated to reduce indications of their presence and blend in with legitimate activity. Rather than broadly removing evidence, adversaries may target specific artifacts that appear anomalous or are likely to draw scrutiny, while leaving sufficient data intact to maintain the appearance of normal system behavior.
Command and Control TA0011
T1090.003Proxy: Multi-hop Proxy
Adversaries may chain together multiple proxies to disguise the source of malicious traffic. Typically, a defender will be able to identify the last proxy traffic traversed before it enters their network; the defender may or may not be able to identify any previous proxies before the last-hop proxy. This technique makes identifying the original source of the malicious traffic even more difficult by requiring the defender to trace malicious traffic through several proxies to identify its source.
Sources
AI-generated · no human review · this permalink is the shareable record for the finding · verify operationally critical claims against the linked primary source.