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Transparent Tribe is a Pakistan-aligned cyberespionage threat actor also known as APT36, Mythic Leopard, COPPER FIELDSTONE, ProjectM, Earth Karkaddan, and Storm-0156. It targets Indian government, military, diplomatic, academic, and strategically relevant entities, and has also targeted government and defense organizations in Afghanistan. Its operations emphasize intelligence collection through remote access, surveillance, credential harvesting, and document theft. Its activity overlaps with the separately tracked SideCopy cluster, also known as TAG-140. The group uses spear-phishing links and attachments, document impersonation, examination-themed lures, and decoy documents to induce execution. Windows infection chains employ deceptive shortcuts, batch scripts, HTML Applications, PowerShell, and malicious Office add-ins. Payloads use layered encoding, encryption, in-memory .NET loading, and deserialization-based execution. Observed evasion measures include security-software discovery, antivirus-dependent execution paths, Mark-of-the-Web removal, string obfuscation, junk code, and deletion of staging artifacts. Remote-access payloads provide shell execution, screen surveillance, clipboard access, password harvesting, filesystem enumeration, and file transfer. Persistence mechanisms include startup entries and registry autoruns. Transparent Tribe also targets Linux, including BOSS Linux deployments in Indian government environments. Linux delivery chains use application launchers disguised as PDF documents to display decoys while retrieving and executing Go-based or Python-based implants. These implants support host reconnaissance, command execution, screenshots, document collection, and exfiltration, with persistence through user-level systemd services and reboot-triggered cron jobs. Its malware arsenal includes Crimson RAT and the Operation RapidRust tools RUSTYSHADE, PSNATCH, BASHNATCH, and RUSTYMOVE. RUSTYSHADE is a Rust-based backdoor that uses private GitHub repositories for encrypted command exchange and data exfiltration, including screenshots and webcam captures. PSNATCH and BASHNATCH steal recently modified documents from Windows and Linux systems respectively, while RUSTYMOVE propagates RUSTYSHADE through USB drives.
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Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
41 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
54 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
49 additional families tracked in Mallory.
7 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 7 of them exploited in the wild.
the attachment was a weaponized RTF document utilizing CVE-2012-0158 to drop an embedded, encoded portable executable (PE)... In multiple lure documents, Type: Exploit, CVE-2012-0158, Embedded Payload.
...has exploited CVE-2012-0158 and CVE-2010-3333 for execution against targeted systems.
in one case, we saw attackers making use of template injection attack and equation editor vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882) as the initial infection vector.
CVE-2023-38831 is a vulnerability that enables malicious actors to execute arbitrary code when a user tries to access a harmless file contained within a ZIP archive.
This detection identifies instances where Windows Explorer.exe spawns PowerShell or cmd.exe processes, particularly focusing on executions initiated by LNK files. This behavior is associated with the ZDI-CAN-25373 Windows shortcut zero-day vulnerability, where specially crafted LNK files are used to trigger malicious code execution through cmd.exe or powershell.exe. This technique has been actively exploited by multiple APT groups in targeted attacks through both HTTP and SMB delivery methods.
2 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
1,408 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A Pakistani state-aligned cyber-espionage group reportedly active since approximately 2013, focused on intelligence collection supporting Pakistan’s strategic interests, particularly against strategic, military, and diplomatic targets. Its attribution to the analyzed scareware intrusion is unconfirmed.
Pakistan-origin espionage actor historically targeting Indian defense forces and government officials; the observed campaign expands targeting to Indian academic institutions and deploys a remote-access trojan for data collection, remote command execution, persistence, and exfiltration.
Conducting strategic espionage-oriented spear-phishing campaigns against Indian academic, government, and defense targets. The group delivers ReverseRAT through malicious ZIP/LNK/HTA infection chains, using mshta.exe, layered obfuscation, reflective DLL loading, and Registry Run Key persistence.
Conducting strategic intelligence-collection and espionage campaigns, using spear-phishing and multi-stage HTA/DLL infection chains to deploy remote-access trojans against Indian academic institutions, government entities, defense forces, and Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.