apt29

name	apt29
description	APT29 (Cozy Bear / Midnight Blizzard, SVR) adversary-emulation playbook — malware-light cloud-identity espionage: no-MFA password spray, OAuth consent/token abuse, Golden SAML, mailbox collection over residential proxies. Use when emulating APT29 against an M365/Entra/AWS-identity estate. Triggers on: 'emulate APT29', 'Cozy Bear', 'Midnight Blizzard', 'NOBELIUM', 'OAuth abuse', 'cloud identity espionage', 'Golden SAML'.
allowed-tools	Read Write Edit
metadata	{"subdomain":"planning","when_to_use":"emulate APT29, Cozy Bear, Midnight Blizzard, NOBELIUM, The Dukes, SVR, cloud identity espionage, OAuth consent abuse, token theft, Golden SAML, M365 Entra espionage, supply chain","tags":"adversary-emulation, apt29, cozy-bear, cloud-identity, oauth, espionage","mitre_attack":"T1078.004, T1528, T1550.001, T1098.001, T1606.002, T1114.002, T1071.001"}

APT29 — Adversary Emulation Playbook

Tier-3 Russian SVR espionage actor. Emulate stealth cloud-identity tradecraft, not malware: APT29's modern signature is compromising identity (no-MFA password spray, device-code/consent phishing), abusing OAuth applications and tokens for persistence, and collecting mail/documents over residential proxies with a near-zero endpoint footprint. Authorized red-team emulation only — every action runs under the engagement RoE.

When to emulate APT29

• Target is a cloud-first / hybrid-identity estate (Microsoft 365 + Entra ID, Okta, AWS IAM Identity Center, Google Workspace) and the client wants their identity blast radius tested the way a top-tier espionage actor would.
• Government, diplomatic, defense, think-tank, technology, or MSP targets (see the industry → actor map in ../../references/apt-groups.md).
• The objective is quiet, long-dwell collection — not smash-and-grab.

ThreatProfile seed (plan/threat-profile.json)

{
  "engagement_name": "<fill>",
  "actor_name": "APT29-like (Cozy Bear / Midnight Blizzard)",
  "actor_aliases": ["Cozy Bear", "Midnight Blizzard", "NOBELIUM", "The Dukes", "UNC2452"],
  "group_id": "G0016",
  "tier": "tier-3",
  "sophistication": "nation-state",
  "motivation": "espionage",
  "initial_access": ["T1078.004", "T1110.003", "T1566.002", "T1195.002"],
  "key_ttps": ["T1528", "T1550.001"       
       
     
   
   

Prune to RoE: if social engineering is out of scope, drop T1566.002; if only one cloud is in scope, drop the others. A phase whose techniques are all pruned drops its kill-chain row.

Kill-chain emulation

Each row is a candidate OPPLAN objective. The orchestrator's OPPLAN-builder turns surviving rows into add_objective calls; the executing agent loads the named skill.

#	Phase	MITRE	Emulated action	Executing agent → skill
1	Recon	T1593 / T1589.002	Map tenant, federation, employees, exposed apps/OWA, email format	recon → /skills/standard/recon/osint/SKILL.md, /skills/standard/recon/cloud-recon/SKILL.md
2	Initial Access	T1110.003	Slow password spray against legacy/no-MFA cloud auth	exploit → /skills/standard/exploit/web/ato-methodology/SKILL.md
3	Initial Access (alt)	T1566.002	Device-code / consent phishing (Teams/email lure)	phisher → /skills/standard/phisher/SKILL.md
4	Initial Access (alt)	T1195.002	CI/CD or dependency supply-chain foothold	exploit → /skills/standard/exploit/supplychain/dep-confusion/SKILL.md
5	Credential/Token	T1528 / T1550.001	Steal & replay OAuth app access tokens (skip password+MFA)	exploit → /skills/standard/exploit/web/oauth/SKILL.md
6	Persistence (cloud)	T1098.001 / T1098.003	Add app credentials + high Graph roles; consent malicious OAuth app	cloud → /skills/standard/cloud/azure-managed-identity/SKILL.md, /skills/standard/cloud/aws-iam-passrole-chain/SKILL.md
7	Lateral (identity)	T1606.002	Golden SAML / federation-trust token forgery	exploit → /skills/standard/exploit/web/saml/SKILL.md
8	Collection	T1114.002	Mailbox / document collection via Graph (canary mailbox)	post-exploit → /skills/standard/post-exploit/credential-access/SKILL.md
9	C2	T1071.001 / T1090.003	Sliver beacon over HTTPS via residential proxy	post-exploit → /skills/standard/post-exploit/c2-sliver/SKILL.md
10	Exfiltration	T1567.002	Low-and-slow exfil of scoped collection set	post-exploit → /skills/standard/post-exploit/reporting/SKILL.md

Defense evasion (T1070.004 log/file cleanup, blending with admin activity) is cross-cutting — the shared defense-evasion / opsec skills are auto-injected into every operational agent.

CONOPS kill_chain (copy into conops.json)

Collapse the table into the 5-phase ObjectivePhase model:

1. recon — tenant/identity/federation enumeration (rows 1).
2. initial-access — no-MFA password spray + consent phishing + optional supply-chain (2-4).
3. post-exploit — token theft, cloud role/cred persistence, Golden SAML, mailbox collection (5-8).
4. c2 — Sliver over HTTPS via residential proxy (9).
5. exfiltration — scoped, throttled collection exfil (10).

OPSEC & signature fidelity

• Low and slow. Spread the password spray over hours, one attempt per account; APT29 is patient. No bursty auth.
• Egress from residential / reputable IP space, not a datacenter VPS, to defeat IOC-based detection (mirror the real actor's residential-proxy obfuscation).
• Prefer tokens over passwords. Once an app token is held, stop touching passwords/MFA — that is the whole point of the OAuth tradecraft.
• Blend with admin activity. Use Graph/PowerShell the way a tenant admin would; avoid noisy endpoint tooling.
• Clean up consent grants and added credentials at engagement end (feeds cleanup.json).

RoE / safety gates

• Identity takeover is high blast-radius. OAuth consent + added cloud roles can affect a production tenant globally — require explicit, written cloud-tenant authorization. Prefer a dedicated test tenant or a sandboxed app registration.
• Phishing requires social-engineering authorization and a lure-deconfliction pass (/skills/standard/phisher/lure-deconfliction/SKILL.md).
• Add an EMERGENCY abort trigger to abort.json: "real (non-canary) user mailbox or document collected, or consent granted on a non-engagement OAuth app."

Deconfliction

• Name every engagement OAuth app redteam-<engagement-id>-* and record the app/client IDs in deconfliction.json.
• Pin a known deconfliction egress IP range + a marker User-Agent string so the identity team can separate the exercise from a real Midnight Blizzard sign-in.
• Pre-brief the identity/SOC team that no-MFA spray + consent grants are expected.

Fidelity notes (deviations)

• Emulate consent/token abuse with an engagement-owned app registration — never publish a real malicious multi-tenant app.
• Use a canary mailbox/SharePoint site seeded with marked documents for the collection and exfil phases; do not collect real PII or classified mail.
• Sliver replaces APT29's bespoke implants (WINELOADER, etc.); fidelity is the C2 channel shape (HTTPS, jittered beacon, residential egress), not the binary.