Lazarus Group

Lazarus Group is a North Korean state-sponsored cyber threat group attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). Lazarus Group has been active since at least 2009 and is reportedly responsible for the November 2014 destructive wiper attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, identified by Novetta as part of Operation Blockbuster. Malware used by Lazarus Group correlates to other reported campaigns, including Operation Flame, Operation 1Mission, Operation Troy, DarkSeoul, and Ten Days of Rain. North Korea’s cyber operations have shown a consistent pattern of adaptation, forming and reorganizing units as national priorities shift. These units frequently share personnel, infrastructure, malware, and tradecraft, making it difficult to attribute specific operations with high confidence. Public reporting often uses “Lazarus Group” as an umbrella term for multiple North Korean cyber operators conducting espionage, destructive attacks, and financially motivated campaigns.

View MITRE record ↗

• CrowdStrike. (2022, February 1). CrowdStrike Adversary Labyrinth Chollima. Retrieved February 1, 2022.
• Michael Barnhart, Austin Larsen, Jeff Johnson, Taylor Long, Michelle Cantos, Adrian Hernandez. (2023, October 10). Assessed Cyber Structure and Alignm
• Michael Barnhart, Michelle Cantos, Jeffery Johnson, Elias fox, Gary Freas, Dan Scott. (2022, March 23). Not So Lazarus: Mapping DPRK Cyber Threat Grou
• Microsoft . (2023, July 12). How Microsoft names threat actors. Retrieved November 17, 2023.
• Novetta Threat Research Group. (2016, February 24). Operation Blockbuster: Unraveling the Long Thread of the Sony Attack. Retrieved February 25, 2016.
• Secureworks. (2017, December 15). Media Alert - Secureworks Discovers North Korean Cyber Threat Group, Lazarus, Spearphishing Financial Executives of
• Smith, B. (2017, December 19). Microsoft and Facebook disrupt ZINC malware attack to protect customers and the internet from ongoing cyberthreats. Ret
• US Treasury . (2019, September 13). Treasury Sanctions North Korean State-Sponsored Malicious Cyber Groups. Retrieved September 29, 2021.
• US-CERT. (2017, June 13). Alert (TA17-164A) HIDDEN COBRA – North Korea’s DDoS Botnet Infrastructure. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
• US-CERT. (2019, April 10). MAR-10135536-8 – North Korean Trojan: HOPLIGHT. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
• 佐々木勇人 Hayato Sasaki. (2025, March 25). Tempted to Classifying APT Actors: Practical Challenges of Attribution in the Case of Lazarus’s Subgroup. Retri