A complete phishing operation started concentrating on Indian firms in November 2025 by impersonating the Revenue Tax Division of India.
The marketing campaign employed remarkably genuine authorities communication templates, bilingual messaging in Hindi and English, and authorized references to sections of the Revenue Tax Act to create a way of legitimacy and urgency.
The emails warned recipients of alleged tax irregularities and demanded that they submit paperwork inside 72 hours, utilizing psychological strain as a main weapon to drive customers to open malicious attachments.
The assault delivered a classy two-stage malware chain that started with password-protected ZIP information containing shellcode loaders and later advanced to make use of Google Docs hyperlinks for secondary payload supply.
The ultimate payload was a Distant Entry Trojan designed to grant attackers full management over compromised programs, together with capabilities for display screen sharing, file switch, and distant command execution.
The marketing campaign particularly focused securities corporations, monetary firms, and non-banking monetary companies that frequently change regulatory paperwork with authorities businesses.
Raven safety analysts recognized the zero-day phishing marketing campaign by recognizing a number of layers of inconsistency inside the assault construction, in the end stopping widespread an infection throughout focused organizations.
An infection mechanism of this marketing campaign
The an infection mechanism of this marketing campaign reveals a rigorously engineered strategy to evasion.
Preliminary phishing emails originated from reliable QQ.com free e mail accounts that handed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication checks, a important consider bypassing conventional e mail safety filters.
Phishing E-mail #1 (Supply – Raven)
The attachments used password safety to forestall antivirus engines from scanning their contents throughout transit.
Phishing E-mail #2 (Supply – Raven)
When customers extracted the ZIP information with passwords supplied within the emails, they encountered executable information named “NeededDocuments” that contained shellcode designed to execute by means of regsvr32 proxy loading.
This system, generally often known as fileless execution, allowed the malware to load a hidden DLL instantly into reminiscence with out writing detectable signatures to the disk.
The shellcode established persistence mechanisms, harvested saved credentials from the sufferer’s system, and opened communication channels to distant command servers related to AsyncRAT infrastructure.
Some variants used Google Docs as a trusted internet hosting platform for the second stage, exploiting the inherent belief positioned in reliable cloud companies by company safety filters.
The mix of fresh sender authentication, password-protected payloads, reliable cloud infrastructure, and regsvr32 proxy execution created a virtually invisible assault chain that rendered signature-based detection strategies ineffective.
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