A familiar, uneasy brink appears to be looming between India and Pakistan once again, where geopolitical tension spills over borders into less visible spheres and risks spilling over into more obscure regions.
As the war intensified in May 2025, cyberspace became one of the next arenas that was contested.
Pakistan-linked hacktivist groups began claiming widespread cyberattacks on Indian government bodies, academic institutions, and critical infrastructure elements as the result of heightened hostilities. It appeared, at first glance, that the volume of asserted attacks indicated that there was a broad cyber offensive on the part of the perpetrators.
There is, however, a more nuanced story to be told when we take a closer look at the reports.
According to findings from security firm CloudSEK, many of these alleged breaches were either overstated or entirely fabrications, based on recycled data dumps, cosmetic website defacements, and short-lived interruptions that caused little harm to operations.
Despite the symphonic noise surrounding the Pahalgam terror attack, a more sobering development lay instead behind the curtain. It was an intrusion campaign targeting Indian defense-linked networks based on the Crimson RAT malware that was deployed by the APT36 advanced persistent threat group.
Using a clear distinction between spectacle and substance, this study examines what transpired in India-Pakistan cyber conflict, why it matters, and where the real risks lie in the coming months in order to discern what has truly unfolded.
In spite of the noise of hacktivist claims, researchers warn that a much more methodical and state-aligned cyber espionage effort has been quietly unfolding beneath the surface level noise.
There has been a significant increase in the focus of Pakistan-linked threat actors operating under the designation APT36, also referred to by cybersecurity experts as Earth Karkaddan, Mythic Leopard, Operation C-Major, and Transparent Tribe in the past couple of years.
It has been more than a decade since this group established itself, and it has demonstrated a track record of conducting targeted intelligence-gathering operations against Indian institutions through its work.
Analysts observed in August 2025 a shift in tactics for a campaign known as APT36 that focused on Linux-based systems, using carefully designed malware delivery techniques, rather than targeting Windows-based systems.
APT36 used procurement-themed phishing lures to distribute malware ZIP archives disguised as routine documents, allowing attackers to distribute malware.
The malware dropper was coveredtly downloaded and installed by these files, which were then executed through Windows desktop entry configurations.
A decoy PDF was also displayed to avoid suspicion, while the malware dropper itself retrieved a malware dropper on Google Drive.
According to a further analysis, the payload was designed to avoid detection using anti-debugging and anti-sandbox measures, maintain persistence on compromised systems, and establish covert communication with command-and-control infrastructure over WebSockets, which were all hallmarks of a calculated espionage operation rather than an opportunistic intrusion.
According to further analysis conducted by Zscaler ThreatLabz, the activity appears to be part of two coordinated campaigns, identified as Gopher Strike and Sheet Attack, both of which were carried out from September 2025 to October 2025.
It is worth keeping in mind that while elements of the operations bear resemblance to techniques that have historically been associated with APT36, researchers are generally inclined to believe that the observed activity may be the work of a distinct subgroup or a separate threat actor which is linked to Pakistan.
There are two main types of attacks known as Sheet Attacks and they are characterized by their use of trusted cloud-based platforms for command-and-control communications, including Google Sheets, Firebase, and email services, which enables your attack traffic to blend into legitimate network traffic.
It has been reported that the Gopher Strike, on the other hand, is initiated by phishing emails that provide PDF attachments which are meant to deceive recipients into installing an Adobe Acrobat Reader DC update that is falsely advertised. A blurred image is displayed on top of a seemingly benign prompt, which instructs users to download the update before they can view the contents of this document.
A user selecting the embedded option will initiate the download of an ISO image, but only when the request originated from an address in India and corresponds to an Indian user agent specified in a Windows registry - server-side checks to frustrate automated analysis and prevent delivery to a specific audience.
A downloader built on the Golang programming language is embedded within the ISO copy, named GOGITTER, in order for it to be able to establish persistent downloads across multiple directories of the system by creating and repeatedly executing Visual Basic scripts in several locations.
A portion of the malware periodically retrieves commands from preconfigured command-and-control servers and can, if necessary, access additional payloads from a private GitHub repository, which was created earlier in 2025. This indicates the campaign was deliberately designed and has sustained operational intent for the above period.
An intrusion sequence is initiated once the malicious payload has been retrieved by executing a tightly coordinated series of actions designed to establish deeper control as well as confirm compromise. The investigator notes that the infected system first sends a HTTP GET request to a domain adobe-acrobat[.]in in order to inform the operator that the target had been successfully breached.
GOGBITTER downloaders unpack and launch executable files that are then executed from previously delivered archives, called edgehost.exe. It is this component's responsibility to deploy GITSHELLPAD, a lightweight Golang backdoor which relies heavily on attackers' control of private GitHub repositories for command-and-control purposes.
This backdoor keeps in close touch with the operators by periodically polling a remote server for instructions stored in a file called command.txt that is updated every few seconds.
In addition to being able to navigate directories and execute processes on a compromised system, attackers are also able to transfer files between the compromised and non-compromised system. The execution results are recorded in a separate file and sent back to GitHub, where they are then exfiltrated and stored until the forensic trace is completely removed.
Moreover, Zscaler researchers have observed that operators after initial access downloaded additional RAR archives using the cURL-based command line. As part of these packages, there were tools for system reconnaissance, as well as a custom Golang loader known as GOSHELL that was used to eventually deploy a Cobalt Strike beacon after several decoding stages were completed.
There is no doubt about the fact that the loader was intentionally padded with extraneous data in order to increase its size to about one gigabyte, which is a tactic that was used as a way to bypass antivirus detections.
When the auxiliary tools had fulfilled their purpose, they were systematically removed from the host, reflecting a disciplined effort to keep the campaign as stealthy as possible.
Recently, investigations indicate that cyber tensions between India and Pakistan are intensifying. It is important to distinguish between high-impact threats and performative digital noise in order to avoid the loss of privacy.
Even though waves of hacktivist claims created the illusion of a widespread cyberattack on Indian institutions in mid-2025, detailed analysis reveals that the majority of these disruptions were exaggerated or of inconsequential nature.
Among the more consequential risks that Pakistan-linked actors, including groups such as APT36, are associated with is sustained and technically sophisticated espionage operations.
The attacks illustrate a clear evolution in the use of tradecraft, combining targeted phishing attacks, exploitation of trusted cloud platforms, and the use of custom malware frameworks, all of which are being used to quietly penetrate both Linux and Windows environments within governments and defense organizations.
It is important to note that selective delivery mechanisms, stealthy persistence techniques, and layering of payloads-all culminating in the deployment of advanced post-exploitation tools-underline a strategic focus on long-term access rather than immediate disruption of the network.
The findings underscore to policymakers and security teams that the importance of detecting covert, state-aligned intrusions over headline-driven hacktivist activity needs to be prioritized, and that in an increasingly contested cyber world, it is crucial that cybersecurity defenses are strengthened against phishing, cloud abuse, and endpoint monitoring.
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