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Confucius is an India-linked cyber espionage threat actor, also tracked as APT-C-23, that has been publicly reported since 2016 with activity dating back to at least 2013. The group is associated with Delhi-based Indian operations and is known for targeting government and military organizations, particularly in South Asia and East Asia, with a strong emphasis on Pakistani state and defense entities. Confucius is primarily a spearphishing-driven intrusion set. It commonly uses crafted emails with malicious attachments and topical lures to induce user execution and gain initial access. The group has used PowerShell during execution and staging, and has established persistence through Windows Startup folder abuse and scheduled tasks. Its malware ecosystem includes custom stealers and modular backdoors designed for intelligence collection and covert exfiltration. Observed collection behavior includes searching local drives and user directories for documents and images of intelligence value, including files in common user folders and on non-system drives. Confucius has exfiltrated stolen files to command-and-control infrastructure and has also been reported using cloud storage accounts for exfiltration. The group uses HTTP for command-and-control communications. Recent reporting has described a modular backdoor platform known as Anondoor, which reflects an evolution from earlier downloader-style tooling to a componentized framework. Anondoor is delivered through a shortcut-based infection chain and uses DLL side-loading with a legitimate Python executable to launch the malicious component. It establishes persistence via scheduled task creation, profiles the victim host and disk environment, derives a host identifier from firmware and system attributes, and retrieves additional components dynamically. One such component is WooperStealer, a file theft module previously associated with Confucius operations. The framework’s parameterized component loading and separation of command-and-control details from downloaded modules improve operational flexibility and complicate analysis and attribution. Confucius has also been noted to share code or operational commonalities with other India-nexus actors, including SideWinder, and has been discussed alongside Bitter and Mysterious Elephant in regional threat reporting. Its overall tradecraft and victimology are consistent with a long-running regional espionage mission focused on government, military, and related strategic intelligence targets.
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.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
40 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
7 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
2 additional families tracked in Mallory.
5 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 5 of them exploited in the wild.
APT41 leveraged the follow exploits... CVE-2015-1641...
...has exploited Office vulnerabilities such as CVE-2017-11882...
...has exploited Microsoft Office vulnerabilities... CVE-2018-0802.
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.
Zscaler's ThreatLabz named the APT28 campaign exploiting it "Operation Neusploit." Trellix published a detailed analysis. CISA added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog... An India-linked threat actor is using CVE-2026-21509 weaponized documents to target Pakistani government entities... The attack follows the same CVE-2017-0199 → CVE-2017-11882 pattern documented in APT28's Operation Neusploit... Weaponized DOCX ... → CVE-2026-21509: Remote template injection
9 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.
Referenced only as an India-nexus adversary with similarities to Mysterious Elephant.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection.
Listed as a threat actor associated with the PowerShell P/Invoke process injection API chain detection and related ATT&CK techniques.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection analytic.
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.