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Mysterious Elephant, also tracked as APT-K-47 and TAG-179, is a South Asia-focused cyber-espionage threat actor assessed with high confidence to be aligned with Indian state interests. The group has been active since at least 2022 and primarily targets government, foreign affairs, diplomatic, military, defense, and law-enforcement entities, with a strong concentration on Pakistan and additional activity against Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and other countries. Reporting also notes overlaps or shared tooling with other India-nexus clusters including Bitter and Confucius, but Mysterious Elephant is tracked as a distinct intrusion set. The actor relies heavily on social engineering and spear-phishing, often using diplomatic or regional political themes. Observed initial-access methods include phishing emails, malicious documents, CHM-based delivery, exploit chains involving CVE-2017-11882, and abuse of WinRAR vulnerability CVE-2023-38831. More recent campaigns have also used exploit kits and staged PowerShell-based delivery. The group commonly uses legitimate Windows utilities and scripting to retrieve payloads, execute follow-on tooling, and establish persistence. Mysterious Elephant’s malware ecosystem includes ORPCBackdoor, Asyncshell, WalkerShell, NimBo-C2, BabShell, MemLoader HidenDesk, MemLoader Edge, VRat, DemoTrySpy, and NixBackdoor, and it has also been linked to Remcos-related activity. ORPCBackdoor is a custom backdoor using RPC communications for remote control. Asyncshell provides command execution and has evolved through multiple versions with increased obfuscation and stealth. WalkerShell and NimBo-C2 have been used as intermediate implants to execute commands, traverse disks, collect files, and deploy additional payloads. BabShell is a reverse shell used in later campaigns to stage in-memory loaders. MemLoader HidenDesk and MemLoader Edge are loader components used to execute payloads in memory while incorporating anti-sandbox and evasion behavior; associated payloads have included Remcos RAT and a vxRat-derived backdoor referred to as VRat. The group’s post-compromise objectives center on intelligence collection and data theft. Observed capabilities include remote command execution, host reconnaissance, persistence, file collection and exfiltration, browser credential theft, and theft of WhatsApp-related data. DemoTrySpy has been used to extract Chrome credentials, while other modules have targeted documents and media shared through WhatsApp Desktop. Campaign reporting also describes disk traversal, collection of files of interest, and exfiltration of stolen data through operator-controlled infrastructure. Mysterious Elephant shows recurring tactical and tooling overlaps with other India-nexus espionage actors, especially through shared malware families and lure themes, but available reporting most consistently characterizes it as a separate espionage cluster focused on South Asian geopolitical intelligence requirements.
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.
18 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.
1 CVE this actor has used in observed campaigns. 1 of them exploited in the wild.
12 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
13 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
India-nexus intrusion set linked here through infrastructure and tactical overlaps with the Remcos RAT activity targeting Pakistani law enforcement organizations.
Named as overlapping with TAG-179 in infrastructure, tooling, and TTPs in India-nexus espionage activity.
India-nexus cyber-espionage group tracked by Kaspersky; primarily targets diplomatic, military, and defense institutions in Pakistan and Bangladesh; assessed as distinct from Sloppy Lemming.
Targeting government and foreign affairs sectors in South Asia using exploit kits, phishing, and a chain of custom and open-source malware for espionage and data exfiltration.
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.