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Blind Eagle, also tracked as TAG-144, APT-C-36, and linked by some researchers to Red Akodon, continued targeting organizations across South America with a sustained emphasis on Colombian government entities at the local, municipal, and federal levels. Researchers described multi-stage intrusion chains using spearphishing, including compromised Colombian government email accounts, to deliver commodity and cracked remote access trojans through exposed Apache staging servers, dynamic DNS infrastructure, and legitimate internet services used for payload staging. The group has remained active since at least 2018, blending credential theft, financial crime, and surveillance-oriented collection against public-sector targets.
Recent activity shows the actor refining rather than replacing its established toolkit. Investigators observed VBScript-to-PowerShell delivery chains, steganography to conceal payloads in image files, a new JavaScript stage with custom AES-based string obfuscation, an AutoIt3 RunPE loader fetched from raw.githubusercontent.com, and repeated use of the "Photo Studio" persistence disguise. The most significant upgrade was a new AsyncRAT variant, JC-46, which adds WNF-based process injection, custom Base28 encoding, HVNC support for banking fraud, browser profile cloning, and a bypass for Chrome App-Bound Encryption v20, while the group continued reusing VPN-linked command-and-control infrastructure and familiar dynamic DNS patterns.
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5 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
The LevelBlue report says Blind Eagle's JC-46 payload added WNF-based process injection, custom Base28 encoding, HVNC for banking fraud, browser profile cloning, and a Chrome App-Bound Encryption v20 bypass, indicating incremental upgrades focused on banking fraud.
LevelBlue researchers observed four notable Blind Eagle developments between late May and early July 2026: a third string-obfuscation scheme with a JavaScript AES stage, an AutoIt3 RunPE loader staged via raw.githubusercontent.com, reuse of the 'Photo Studio' persistence disguise, and an upgraded AsyncRAT build named JC-46.
The Recorded Future report cites additional evidence connecting TAG-144 to Red Akodon and notes the use of compromised Colombian government email accounts to support spearphishing operations.
Insikt Group reported identifying five distinct TAG-144 activity clusters operating across 2024 and 2025, mainly targeting Colombian government entities at local, municipal, and federal levels. The clusters shared tactics such as commodity RATs, dynamic DNS, and legitimate internet services for staging, while differing in infrastructure and malware deployment.
Recorded Future describes TAG-144, also known as Blind Eagle, as having been active since at least 2018, primarily targeting Colombia and broader South America.
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BlindEagle, a South American threat group, orchestrated a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting Colombian government agencies, specifically those under the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism (MCIT). The attackers leveraged compromised internal email accounts to send convincing phishing emails that impersonated the Colombian judicial system, using legal terminology and official formatting to increase credibility and urgency. The emails contained SVG attachments with encoded HTML, leading recipients to a fraudulent web portal designed to mimic the legitimate judicial branch. The attack chain was highly complex and file-less, involving multiple stages of JavaScript execution and PowerShell commands, with each stage using advanced obfuscation techniques such as Base64 and custom algorithms to evade detection. Zscaler analysts identified that the campaign represented a significant escalation in BlindEagle's tactics, moving beyond basic malware to a multi-stage, stealthy infection process that exploited trust relationships within the targeted organizations. The campaign highlights the evolving threat posed by BlindEagle to government entities in Colombia.
Jun 29, 2026
Multiple reporting described **phishing-led intrusions** that establish long-term remote access on victim endpoints using a mix of commodity RATs and layered backdoors. Indian defense and government-aligned organizations were targeted in campaigns attributed to Pakistan-aligned clusters **APT36/Transparent Tribe** and **SideCopy**, using malicious attachments/links to deliver Windows and Linux payloads including **Geta RAT**, **Ares RAT**, and **DeskRAT**. One documented Windows chain used a malicious `LNK` that invoked `mshta.exe` to run a remote HTA, which then decrypted and launched a DLL payload, reflecting continued reliance on living-off-the-land binaries and multi-stage loaders to maintain persistence and enable data theft and post-compromise operations across platforms. Separately, a newly reported **CrashFix** campaign backdoored Windows by socially engineering users to run a command via the Windows Run dialog, then using Windows tools and in-memory scripts to deploy a primary **Python implant** plus additional Python scripts and a reflectively loaded DLL backdoor, followed by network mapping and **Active Directory** targeting—behavior consistent with interactive intrusion/access-brokerage tradecraft. FortiGuard Labs also detailed a phishing campaign delivering a new **XWorm** variant via a malicious Excel attachment exploiting `CVE-2018-0802` to fetch an HTA, trigger PowerShell, and load a fileless .NET module that uses process hollowing to inject XWorm into `Msbuild.exe`, alongside analysis of encrypted C2 traffic and plugin-based capabilities enabling full remote control of compromised Windows systems.
Jun 29, 2026
Researchers linked a cluster of hacktivist activity with medium confidence to **4BID** and associated groups including **Hakerskii Kit**, **C.A.S.**, and **Goffee**, reporting that operations have expanded beyond Russia and Belarus into **Kazakhstan, the UAE, Syria, and Egypt**. The attackers primarily obtained initial access by exploiting **ProxyShell** on vulnerable **Microsoft Exchange** servers, then installed the `fd.aspx` web shell and used custom scripts alongside legitimate remote management and monitoring tools to deepen access and persistence. Post-compromise activity included deployment of **BlackReaperRAT**, **Warp RAT**, **Sliver**, **Havoc**, **Mythic Apollo**, **AdaptixC2**, and a newly documented **BlackSalt** backdoor, as well as utilities such as **AnyDesk**, **Panorama9**, **Dev Tunnels**, **Tactical RMM**, and **Nezha Monitoring**. Investigators also observed **EDR killers**, **ClearWater ransomware**, and an updated **Blackout Locker** variant, indicating that the campaigns have evolved from primarily politically motivated disruption into broader operations with a stronger **financially motivated** component.
Jul 1, 2026