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ModifiedElephant is a long-running threat actor active since at least 2012 that has conducted targeted intrusions in India against human rights activists, human rights defenders, academics, journalists, and lawyers. The actor is notable for combining sustained surveillance with the apparent objective, in some cases, of planting incriminating digital evidence on victim systems. Activity associated with the group has been linked to politically sensitive cases, including the Bhima Koregaon matter, where forensic findings indicated that incriminating documents were introduced onto compromised systems and later used in criminal proceedings. ModifiedElephant primarily relies on spearphishing for initial access, using socially engineered lures tailored to victims’ interests and work, including activism, politics, climate issues, and public affairs. Delivery methods have included malicious Microsoft Office documents, archives, executable attachments disguised with double extensions, password-protected archives, and externally hosted payloads that victims were prompted to download and run. The actor repeatedly used older Office exploit chains, including CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2014-1761, CVE-2013-3906, and CVE-2015-1641. The group has predominantly deployed commodity malware rather than bespoke implants, especially NetWire and DarkComet remote access trojans, along with Visual Basic keyloggers and, in some campaigns, an Android commodity trojan. Operations show persistence and repeated targeting over long periods, sometimes with multiple phishing attempts against the same individual in a single day. Reported tradecraft includes credential theft and keylogging, long-term post-compromise monitoring, and organized staging of files on victim machines consistent with evidence planting. ModifiedElephant has also shown overlap with other India-linked surveillance activity, including shared victimology with SideWinder and infrastructure overlap with Operation Hangover, though those overlaps do not by themselves establish common identity. Definitive public attribution to a specific government entity has not been established. However, the actor’s targeting patterns, operational outcomes, and correlation with arrests in politically charged cases align closely with Indian state interests.
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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.
12 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
2 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
4 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 4 of them exploited in the wild.
Observed lure documents repeatedly made use of CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2014-1761, CVE-2013-3906, CVE-2015-1641 exploits to drop and execute their malware of choice.
Observed lure documents repeatedly made use of CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2014-1761, CVE-2013-3906, CVE-2015-1641 exploits to drop and execute their malware of choice.
Observed lure documents repeatedly made use of CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2014-1761, CVE-2013-3906, CVE-2015-1641 exploits to drop and execute their malware of choice.
Observed lure documents repeatedly made use of CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2014-1761, CVE-2013-3906, CVE-2015-1641 exploits to drop and execute their malware of choice.
5 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
3 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Conducts targeted attacks against civil society and legal/academic individuals in India, with the objective of planting incriminating digital evidence; active since at least 2012.
Conducts long-term surveillance and spearphishing campaigns against activists, human rights defenders, journalists, academics, and lawyers in India, using commodity RATs and keyloggers to compromise systems and plant incriminating digital evidence prior to arrests.
Referenced as a separate APT that later targeted an Indian individual also seen in Appin-related activity; no further detail is provided here.
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.