The FLARE team is once again hosting its annual Flare-On challenge, now in its eighth year. Take this opportunity to enjoy some extreme social distancing by solving fun puzzles to test your mettle and learn new tricks on your path to reverse engineering excellence. The contest will begin at 8:00 p.m. ET on Sept. 10, 2021. This is a CTF-style challenge for all active and aspiring reverse engineers, malware analysts, and security professionals. The contest runs for six full weeks and ends at 8:00 p.m. ET on Oct. 22, 2021.

APT1 is a single organization of operators that has conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen. The scale and impact of APT1’s operations compelled us to write this report. The activity we have directly observed likely represents only a small fraction of the cyber espionage that APT1 has conducted.  Though our visibility of APT1’s activities is incomplete, we have analyzed the group’s intrusions against nearly 150 victims over seven years. From our unique vantage point responding to victims, we tracked APT1 back to four large networks in Shanghai, two of which are allocated directly to the Pudong New Area.  This report details the substantial amount of APT1’s attack infrastructure, command and control, and modus operandi (tools, tactics, and procedures) that we’ve uncovered. You can also access APT1: Digital appendix and indicators - A list of more than 3,000 APT1 indicators, including domain names, IP addresses, X.509 encryption certificates and MD5 hashes of malware in APT1's arsenal of digital weapons.