India faces evolved cyber espionage with novel Discord hack

An espionage campaign suspected of links to Pakistan is using a novel approach to operate malware within infected Indian government systems, according to research by Volexity.

The threat actors — tracked as UTA0137 — use emojis on the messaging service Discord for C2 communications as a technique to evade text-based detection.

“Volexity assesses with high confidence that UTA0137 has espionage-related objectives and a remit to target government entities in India,” Volexity noted in the research. “Based on Volexity’s analysis, …

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