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SideWinder is a prolific advanced persistent threat group active since at least 2012 and widely assessed as having an India nexus. It is also tracked as Rattlesnake, Razor Tiger, T-APT-04, and APT-C-17. The group primarily conducts cyber espionage and has repeatedly targeted government, diplomatic, military, and defense-related organizations across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, while also expanding into telecommunications, financial institutions, maritime infrastructure, logistics, and entities associated with nuclear energy. SideWinder is best known for sustained spear-phishing operations using malicious document attachments and socially engineered lures tailored to regional political, diplomatic, military, and sector-specific themes. Observed infection chains include remote template injection and exploitation of CVE-2017-11882, followed by multistage execution involving script-based loaders, .NET components, and custom backdoors. The group has used StealerBot as a private post-exploitation toolkit and has deployed multiple Backdoor Loader variants, including both .NET and C++ implementations. Reporting also associates the actor with use of commodity malware such as AveMariaRAT in some operations. The group demonstrates mature post-compromise tradecraft. Observed behaviors include security software discovery, system owner and user discovery, system and network configuration discovery, file and directory discovery, automated collection, persistence through Registry autorun modifications, and HTTP- and DNS-based command-and-control activity. SideWinder has been observed checking installed antivirus products through Windows security-related WMI interfaces, collecting host metadata such as computer name, operating system version, installed hotfixes, processor and memory details, identifying users, enumerating network interfaces including MAC addresses, and gathering file and directory information from compromised systems. It has also used PowerShell and other script-based execution methods and has shown rapid malware iteration to evade detection, including frequent changes to loaders, persistence methods, and payload variants. Victimology consistently centers on state and strategic targets. High-confidence reporting places major targeting emphasis on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China, and Gulf states, with additional activity against ministries, diplomatic entities, and critical-sector organizations in Egypt, Djibouti, and other countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. SideWinder’s operational pattern and target selection are consistent with a long-running regional espionage actor focused on intelligence collection.
Mallory correlates actor tradecraft and target patterns against your stack, your sector, and your geography. See overlap before they land.
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.
53 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
10 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
5 additional families tracked in Mallory.
6 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 6 of them exploited in the wild.
Prior Acronis TRU reporting confirms SideWinder chains CVE-2017-0199 with CVE-2017-11882 (Equation Editor memory corruption) to deliver multistage shellcode loaders culminating in the StealerBot credential-harvesting implant
Notably, the attackers continue to exploit the Microsoft Office Remote Template Injection vulnerability (CVE-2017-0199) ... Kit 2 — CVE-2017-0199 OLE2Link Exploitation ... OLE2Link exploit (CVE-2017-0199, patched by Microsoft in April 2017)
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.
An India-linked threat actor operating from machine MALDEV01 under username WarMachine is exploiting CVE-2026-21509 (Microsoft Office security feature bypass, CVSS 7.8) to target Pakistani government entities.
Sidewinder has exploited vulnerabilities to gain execution including... CVE-2020-0674.
1 more CVE tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
484 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.
Mentioned only as one of many threat actors associated with the ATT&CK technique/detection annotation for automated collection using Windows dir piped to findstr.
Listed as one of many threat actors associated with the detection's ATT&CK-style annotations for PowerShell and DNS TXT command-and-control behavior; no specific campaign or activity is described in this reference.
Referenced only as an India-nexus adversary with similarities to Mysterious Elephant.
Mentioned only as one of many threat actors associated with the generic discovery technique of running the Linux id command.
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.