{ "id": "10406445-9f38-47c7-9cb5-6e69aea9c47c", "created_at": "2026-04-06T00:19:12.468977Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T03:30:57.989385Z", "deleted_at": null, "sha1_hash": "d189d3d15ae2f21b7a80a257a3f96d1f205d8934", "title": "Elephant Beetle: Uncovering an Organized Financial-Theft Operation", "llm_title": "", "authors": "", "file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "file_size": 63189, "plain_text": "Elephant Beetle: Uncovering an Organized Financial-Theft\r\nOperation\r\nBy Sygnia\r\nPublished: 2022-01-05 · Archived: 2026-04-05 15:04:23 UTC\r\nSygnia’s IR team has identified the Elephant Beetle threat group, an organized, significant financial-theft operation\r\nthreatening global enterprises. \r\nAmnon Kushnir, Noam Lifshitz, Yoav Mazor, Oren Biderman, Boaz Wasserman, Itay Shohat and Arie Zilberstein\r\nFor the past two years, Sygnia’s Incident Response (IR) team has been methodically tracking the Elephant Beetle\r\nthreat group, an organized, significant financial-theft operation threatening global enterprises. \r\nKey points\r\nThe Sygnia Incident Response team identified an organized and experienced threat group siphoning off funds from\r\nbusinesses in the financial sector in Latin America. Sygnia refers to this threat actor as ‘Elephant Beetle’ or TG2003,\r\nalso known as FIN13.  \r\nThis group operates undetected for long periods of time, patiently studying target financial systems, creating\r\nfraudulent transactions hidden among regular activity, and ultimately stealing millions of dollars.\r\nElephant Beetle is highly proficient with Java based attacks and, in many cases, targets legacy Java\r\napplications running on Linux-based machines as a means of initial entry to the environment.\r\nWhile primarily focused in the Latin American market, Elephant Beetle can expand its attacks to\r\norganizations worldwide, with our IR team already discovering a breach in the Latin American operations of a\r\nU.S. company.    \r\nThe full report includes the threat actor’s modus operandi, in-depth analysis of its capabilities, and provides\r\nactionable insights, IOCs and guidelines for defending against the attacks.\r\nhttps://blog.sygnia.co/elephant-beetle-an-organized-financial-theft-operation\r\nPage 1 of 3\n\nOverview\r\nFor the past two years, Sygnia’s Incident Response (IR) team has been tracking a financially motivated threat\r\ngroup targeting and infiltrating organizations from the finance and commerce sectors in Latin America. The\r\nattack is relentless, relying on simplicity to hide in plain sight, without the need to develop sophisticated tools or\r\nexploits.\r\nUsing an arsenal of over 80 unique tools \u0026 scripts, the group executes its attacks patiently over long periods of\r\ntime, blending in with the target’s environment and going completely undetected while it quietly liberates\r\norganizations of large amounts of money. \r\nElephant Beetle seems to primarily focus on Latin American targets, but that doesn’t mean that organizations not\r\nbased there are safe. For example, our IR team discovered that the Latin American operations of a U.S. company had\r\nbeen breached. As such, both regional and global organizations should be on their guard. \r\nThe group is highly proficient with Java based attacks and, in many cases, targets legacy Java applications running\r\non Linux-based machines as a means of initial entry to the environment. Beyond that, the group even deploys\r\ntheir own complete Java web application on victim machines to do their bidding while the machine also runs\r\nlegitimate applications.\r\nElephant Beetle operates in a well-organized and stealthy pattern, efficiently executing each phase of its attack plan\r\nonce inside a compromised environment:\r\n1. During the first phase, which can span up to a month, the group focuses on building operational cyber\r\ncapabilities in the compromised environment. The group studies the digital landscape and plants backdoors\r\nwhile customizing its tools to work within the victim environment.\r\n2. The group then spends several months studying the victim’s environment, focusing on the financial\r\noperation and identifying any flaws. During this stage, they observe victim software and infrastructure to\r\nhttps://blog.sygnia.co/elephant-beetle-an-organized-financial-theft-operation\r\nPage 2 of 3\n\nunderstand the technical process of legitimate financial transactions.\r\n3. The group then creates fraudulent transactions in the environment. These transactions mimic legitimate\r\nbehavior and siphon off incremental amounts of money from the victim. Although the amount of money stolen\r\nin a single transaction may seem insignificant, the group stacks numerous transactions to what amounts to\r\nmillions of dollars.\r\n4. If during its efforts any theft activity is discovered and blocked, the group then simply lays low for a few\r\nmonths only to return and target a different system.\r\nDefending against an elephant beetle attack\r\nThis report is a technical play-by-play of the Elephant Beetle attack as detected, observed and mitigated by Sygnia’s\r\nIR team. We share the threat actor’s modus operandi, in-depth analysis of its capabilities, and provide\r\nactionable insights, IOCs and guidelines for defending against the attacks.\r\nSource: https://blog.sygnia.co/elephant-beetle-an-organized-financial-theft-operation\r\nhttps://blog.sygnia.co/elephant-beetle-an-organized-financial-theft-operation\r\nPage 3 of 3", "extraction_quality": 1, "language": "EN", "sources": [ "Malpedia", "MISPGALAXY" ], "references": [ "https://blog.sygnia.co/elephant-beetle-an-organized-financial-theft-operation" ], "report_names": [ "elephant-beetle-an-organized-financial-theft-operation" ], "threat_actors": [ { "id": "575d8adf-f451-4110-b1c0-89fb463e99c0", "created_at": "2022-10-25T16:07:23.637493Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T02:00:04.696832Z", "deleted_at": null, "main_name": "FIN13", "aliases": [], "source_name": "ETDA:FIN13", "tools": [ "BLUEAGAVE", "BUSTEDPIPE", "CLOSEWATCH", "GetUserSPNS.vbs", "GoBot2", "HOTLANE", "JSPRAT", "MAILSLOT", "PowerSploit", "ProcDump", "SHELLSWEEP", "SIXPACK", "SPINOFF", "SWEARJAR", "Tiny SHell", "nmap", "tsh" ], "source_id": "ETDA", "reports": null }, { "id": "50b43f44-b93c-4377-82bc-d6e9c7ef5ee6", "created_at": "2022-10-25T16:07:23.573424Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T02:00:04.673762Z", "deleted_at": null, "main_name": "Elephant Beetle", "aliases": [ "TG2003" ], "source_name": "ETDA:Elephant Beetle", "tools": [ "JSPSPY", "MiniWebCmdShell", "jsp File browser", "reGeorg" ], "source_id": "ETDA", "reports": null }, { "id": "aa73cd6a-868c-4ae4-a5b2-7cb2c5ad1e9d", "created_at": "2022-10-25T16:07:24.139848Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T02:00:04.878798Z", "deleted_at": null, "main_name": "Safe", "aliases": [], "source_name": "ETDA:Safe", "tools": [ "DebugView", "LZ77", "OpenDoc", "SafeDisk", "TypeConfig", "UPXShell", "UsbDoc", "UsbExe" ], "source_id": "ETDA", "reports": null }, { "id": "7aa1288a-61ec-4793-b543-9fedc26b9b03", "created_at": "2023-11-01T02:01:06.805323Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T02:00:05.331884Z", "deleted_at": null, "main_name": "FIN13", "aliases": [ "FIN13", "Elephant Beetle" ], "source_name": "MITRE:FIN13", "tools": [ "Impacket", "Mimikatz", "certutil" ], "source_id": "MITRE", "reports": null }, { "id": "f57e32ac-9f90-471d-93ba-7f6d8b05e6c1", "created_at": "2023-01-06T13:46:39.29882Z", "updated_at": "2026-04-10T02:00:03.279184Z", "deleted_at": null, "main_name": "FIN13", "aliases": [ "TG2003", "Elephant Beetle" ], "source_name": "MISPGALAXY:FIN13", "tools": [], "source_id": "MISPGALAXY", "reports": null } ], "ts_created_at": 1775434752, "ts_updated_at": 1775791857, "ts_creation_date": 0, "ts_modification_date": 0, "files": { "pdf": "https://archive.orkl.eu/d189d3d15ae2f21b7a80a257a3f96d1f205d8934.pdf", "text": "https://archive.orkl.eu/d189d3d15ae2f21b7a80a257a3f96d1f205d8934.txt", "img": "https://archive.orkl.eu/d189d3d15ae2f21b7a80a257a3f96d1f205d8934.jpg" } }