Andariel is a threat group that the Korean Financial Security Institute designated as a subgroup of Lazarus, as Kaspersky reported in 2021. AhnLab described it in 2018 as active since 2015 and linked its activity to earlier operations against South Korean organizations. Its targets span military and defense bodies, political organizations, security and technology companies, energy research, banks, cash machines, cryptocurrency exchanges, and other financially relevant businesses. Characteristic access methods include spear-phishing documents with macros, watering holes that exploit locally used ActiveX software, attacks on centralized management products, and supply-chain compromise. By 2018 it was also expanding reconnaissance beyond Internet Explorer, collecting browser and software details from compromised Korean websites. Activity observed from 2020 into 2021 showed further evolution toward staged in-memory loaders, interactive backdoor use, and selectively deployed custom ransomware, combining intelligence collection with direct financial gain.
Play Ransomware
#Play • 2024-10
Unit 42 linked Jumpy Pisces, also known as Andariel or PLUTONIUM, to an intrusion that preceded Play ransomware deployment and assessed with moderate confidence that the North Korean state-sponsored actor collaborated with Play operators or acted as an initial access broker. The activity began with a compromised user account, then used SMB to spread Sliver and DTrack, maintained C2 until shortly before ransomware execution, and included credential harvesting, privilege escalation, EDR sensor removal, Windows access-token abuse, PsExec use, and Play ransomware deployment.
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First seen: 2017-07 •
Last seen: 2026-06