OctLurk and SilkLurk Target Governments Across Asia
Since January 2025, a suspected Chinese-speaking threat actor has targeted government organizations mainly in Central Asia. The countries named include Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, while Syria was also targeted, according to Kaspersky. The affected organizations operate across healthcare, research, government offices, foreign affairs ministries, logistics, law enforcement, urban planning, facilities management and public education. The attacks used two new obfuscated backdoors that Kaspersky calls OctLurk and SilkLurk. They also employed a specialized utility named LurkProxy to proxy network traffic. The activity has not been linked to any previously known adversary or group. Somalia is not listed among the targets, but the campaign’s use of concealed tools gives IT teams a concrete reason to inspect their systems and monitor unusual network traffic.
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