Chinese-Speaking Hackers Deploy OctLurk and SilkLurk Backdoors in Central Asian Cyber Attacks
Since January 2025, a Chinese-speaking threat actor has been conducting cyber attacks against government organizations in Central Asia, including Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and the Syrian Arab Republic. These attacks have targeted sectors such as healthcare, research, government offices, ministries of foreign affairs, logistics, law enforcement agencies, urban planning, and public education. The attackers employ two new obfuscated backdoors, OctLurk and SilkLurk, along with a specialized utility called LurkProxy to proxy network traffic. These tools enable a range of malicious activities, including command execution, file operations, credential dumping, keylogging, and remote access. The use of sophisticated backdoors and proxy tools in these attacks highlights an evolving threat landscape where state-sponsored actors develop and deploy advanced malware to achieve persistent access and data exfiltration. Organizations in the targeted regions should enhance their cybersecurity measures to detect and mitigate such threats.
Kill Chain