REF8801

Also known as: REF8801

Intrusion set tracked by Elastic Security Labs, posing as a Web3 venture accelerator (Apex Accelerator / Apex Arena, Apex Foundation) to target cryptocurrency start-ups and founders. Lures offer investment, free AI credits and security audits, and lead victims to install npm packages (@apexacc/cli, @apexacc/audit) that fetch platform-specific payloads: the CloudSyncD backdoor on macOS and a custom information stealer exfiltrating through Telegram on Windows. The packages also repackage a legitimate coding agent to route LLM traffic through attacker infrastructure and register an attacker-controlled MCP server in the victim’s agent configuration. Earlier npm packages from the same operation were reported by SafeDep in July 2026. Elastic makes no state or group attribution.

Introduction

Intrusion set tracked by Elastic Security Labs, posing as a Web3 venture accelerator (Apex Accelerator / Apex Arena, Apex Foundation) to target cryptocurrency start-ups and founders. Lures offer investment, free AI credits and security audits, and lead victims to install npm packages (@apexacc/cli, @apexacc/audit) that fetch platform-specific payloads: the CloudSyncD backdoor on macOS and a custom information stealer exfiltrating through Telegram on Windows. The packages also repackage a legitimate coding agent to route LLM traffic through attacker infrastructure and register an attacker-controlled MCP server in the victim’s agent configuration. Earlier npm packages from the same operation were reported by SafeDep in July 2026. Elastic makes no state or group attribution.

Activities and Tactics

Information pending cataloguing.

Notable Campaigns

Information pending cataloguing.

Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs)

Information pending cataloguing.

Notable Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

No curated IOCs are currently published for this actor. This section will be updated when stable, attributable indicators are available.

Malware and Tools

  • Backdoor.Oldrea:
  • CloudDuke:
  • Agent.btz:
  • Windows Remote Desktop:

Attribution and Evidence

Information pending cataloguing.

References

References pending cataloguing.