NICKEL

Nickel is a notable threat actor in the cybersecurity realm, associated with various other groups including Playful Taurus, APT15, BackdoorDiplomacy, Vixen Panda, and Andariel (also known as APT45, Nickel Hyatt, Onyx Sleet, Silent Chollima, Stonefly, and TDrop2). This group has been actively involved in several malicious activities, notably targeting critical Active Directory assets such as the NTDS.dit file, the KRBTGT service account, and Active Directory certificates. The group's recent shift towards ransom demands marks a significant departure from their earlier schemes, with one incident involving a six-figure cryptocurrency ransom to prevent the publication of stolen documents. Furthermore, the technical and behavioral characteristics of North Korean IT workers align with previous fraud campaigns carried out by this group, now referred to as the "Nickel Tapestry" threat group. On another front, nickel, as a commodity, has been under scrutiny due to illicit activities in Indonesia, the world's largest producer of the metal. Investigations have revealed instances of 'illegal' nickel laundering where companies mined without licenses and sold the material to processing plants using documents from other companies. This surge in production and subsequent suppression of nickel and zinc prices is primarily driven by the increasing global demand for batteries, particularly for electric vehicles, and the rapid industrial production in Indonesia and China. Technological developments in data protection have also seen the use of nickel, specifically in the form of nickel nanofiche. Although not yet presented as a commercial archiving technology, it is among several extreme duration technologies favored for data storage, alongside glass-based technologies like Cerabyte and Microsoft’s Project Silica. These advancements represent potential tape replacement possibilities, further solidifying the importance of nickel in both technological and industrial realms.