GINC-APT-0225 · Targeted, sponsor unknown

Mysterious Elephant

Also APT-K-47.

Category
Targeted, sponsor unknown · Targeted intrusions with no sponsor attributed.
Origin
Unknown
Motivation
Information theft and espionage
Seen
2023
Sources
7 sources carry it
Identifier
GINC-APT-0225 · mysterious-elephant

What it is

Mysterious Elephant is an APT group active since 2023 that primarily targets government and foreign affairs entities across South Asia, especially Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan. In its early-2025 campaign it shifted toward spear-phishing and custom/customized tools—including the BabShell reverse shell and MemLoader HidenDesk/Edge loaders—to deploy RATs like Remcos and VRat, while also using WhatsApp-specific exfiltration tools to steal shared documents, images, and archives. The group shares code and infrastructure with other APT clusters (Origami Elephant, Confucius, SideWinder), reflecting ongoing tool reuse and collaboration among South Asian threat actors.

Names

The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.

Other names
APT-K-47

Targets

Countries
Pakistan

Tools

The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.

  • CrossRat
  • ORPCBackdoor
  • Remcos

Sources