[1] The group, considered an advanced persistent threat, has been active since at least 2009,[3] targeting victims via spear-phishing attacks against government officials' private email addresses, zero-day exploits, and hot-patching vulnerabilities.
[1] PLATINUM succeeded in keeping a low profile until their abuse of the Microsoft Windows hot patching system was detected and publicly reported in April 2016.
[2] In June 2017, PLATINUM became notable for exploiting the serial over LAN (SOL) capabilities of Intel's Active Management Technology to perform data exfiltration.
[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] PLATINUM has been known to exploit web plugins, at one point infiltrating the computers of several Indian government officials 2009, using a website that provided an email service.
[14] Microsoft advises users to apply all of their security updates to minimize vulnerabilities and to keep highly sensitive data out of large networks.