The RedNovember Pest ravages global governments
- Javier Conejo del Cerro
- 25 sept
- 4 Min. de lectura
Since mid-2024, the Chinese state-sponsored cyber-espionage group RedNovember (also tracked as Storm-2077) has been quietly spreading like a pest across global networks. Its operators focus on compromising perimeter appliances — firewalls, VPNs, load balancers, and mail servers — that sit at the edge of organizations but are often under-patched and under-monitored. Through these initial footholds, RedNovember deploys open-source tools like Pantegana and Spark RAT, alongside the widely abused Cobalt Strike, to burrow deep into ministries, defense contractors, aerospace organizations, and law firms. The espionage campaign spans continents, harvesting sensitive diplomatic and defense communications while concealing its activity behind commercial VPN services.
Phase 1: Infestation
RedNovember’s victimology reveals its broad global intelligence appetite. Between June 2024 and July 2025, Recorded Future and Microsoft tracked the group’s activity across Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Oceania, and Europe. Specific victims included:
A ministry of foreign affairs in Central Asia, targeted for diplomatic intelligence.
A state security organization in Africa, pointing to counterintelligence objectives.
A European government directorate tied to policy-making.
Southeast Asian governments and a trade-focused intergovernmental body, linked to geopolitical leverage.
Two U.S. defense contractors and a European engine manufacturer, highlighting interest in military technology.
Aerospace and space organizations, expanding the scope of surveillance to strategic industries.
Law firms, often holding sensitive commercial and legal information.
Regional focus was notable in Panama, Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States, while in South America, the group attempted to compromise Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) portals just before a state visit to China — a clear example of espionage timed to diplomatic milestones.
This wide net suggests that RedNovember operates on shifting intelligence requirements, aligned with Beijing’s geopolitical and technological priorities.
Phase 2: Burrowing In
The group’s initial access relied on weaponizing publicly known vulnerabilities (CVEs) in exposed appliances, exploiting organizations that lagged behind on patching or misconfigured their edge systems. Vendors and flaws targeted included:
Check Point (CVE-2024-24919)
Palo Alto Networks (CVE-2024-3400)
Fortinet, Ivanti, Cisco, Citrix, SonicWall, and F5
These devices are gateways into enterprise networks, handling VPN access, load balancing, or email services. Once compromised, they provided direct pathways past traditional perimeter defenses.
After gaining access, RedNovember deployed LESLIELOADER, a Go-based loader variant used to launch follow-on payloads. Depending on the context, the loader would:
Install Spark RAT, an open-source remote access Trojan.
Drop Cobalt Strike Beacons, widely used for lateral movement, persistence, and command-and-control.
Leverage Pantegana, another open-source post-exploitation framework, for stealthy activity.
The reliance on open-source tools is strategic: by repurposing freely available code, the attackers blur attribution, disguise custom development, and lower the forensic footprint. This is a common hallmark of modern espionage groups.
Phase 3: Feeding & Spreading
Once entrenched inside target networks, RedNovember’s operators exfiltrated valuable information to support espionage goals. This included:
Credentials and authentication tokens, enabling persistence across systems.
Configuration files from appliances, useful for privilege escalation and further exploitation.
Diplomatic and defense communications, giving insight into geopolitical negotiations and military programs.
Their tradecraft was designed for longevity and stealth. Operators concealed their command-and-control traffic by tunneling through ExpressVPN and Warp VPN, services that blend malicious activity into normal encrypted flows. By compartmentalizing their infrastructure, they made detection and takedown significantly harder.
RedNovember also exploited the fact that perimeter devices are often outside standard endpoint detection coverage. By nesting inside appliances, they avoided common monitoring tools, effectively building a hidden foothold that could last for months or years without triggering alarms.
This approach mirrors other Chinese espionage groups, who increasingly exploit edge infrastructure, where patching is slow, monitoring is weak, and access unlocks entire organizational backbones.
Phase 4: Pest Control
Neutralizing RedNovember requires a comprehensive defense strategy. Because their campaign thrives on neglected perimeter systems, organizations must prioritize:
Rapid patching of VPNs, firewalls, and load balancers whenever new CVEs are disclosed.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all remote access services to reduce credential-based risks.
Detailed logging and monitoring of appliance activity, often overlooked in security operations.
Detection of RATs and Cobalt Strike beacons, with endpoint and network-based tools.
Traffic inspection to spot anomalous VPN sessions or covert loader activity.
Credential rotation whenever appliance compromises are suspected, especially for administrator accounts.
Segmentation of workloads to prevent attackers from pivoting laterally once inside.
Zero-trust architectures, ensuring that no device or identity is inherently trusted.
Threat intelligence integration to track RedNovember’s infrastructure, loader variants, and RAT behavior.
These measures are not optional, they are vital in an environment where state-sponsored actors deliberately exploit organizational blind spots.
The RedNovember pest is more than just another espionage campaign. It reflects a systemic shift in Chinese tradecraft toward targeting the soft underbelly of modern IT: edge appliances. These devices, critical to business operations, often escape rigorous monitoring and patching, making them perfect hiding spots.
By leveraging open-source RATs and public vulnerabilities, RedNovember maintains plausible deniability while achieving deep infiltration into ministries, defense, aerospace, and legal sectors worldwide. Its reliance on VPN services to disguise activity underscores a growing blend of criminal and nation-state techniques.
The lesson is clear: governments and enterprises must stop treating perimeter appliances as “install and forget” devices. They are high-value entry points and, as RedNovember shows, the ideal breeding ground for pests that can infest entire networks undetected.
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