#drat — Public Fediverse posts

SilkParasite: Tracking a China-Nexus APT Across Central Asia

SilkParasite is a cyberespionage operation assessed with medium confidence as China-nexus that targeted government bodies across Central Asia. Seven remote access tool families were deployed, five of which were previously undocumented: DriveSilkRAT, CookiETagRAT, NomadRAT, GoginRAT, and NodeEdgeRAT. The toolset is small, modular, and professionally engineered with traces of AI-assisted development. Initial access occurred through malicious Microsoft Office documents delivered via spear-phishing, using regionally tailored lures impersonating government ministries. The operation leveraged DLL sideloading as the primary delivery mechanism and used Google Drive for command-and-control communications to hide within trusted services. Infrastructure analysis identified connections to China Unicom's backbone network, and operational patterns suggest a functioning software organization with maintained build pipelines and careful operational security.

Pulse ID: 6a86a70eb8b57f155e62d4f7
Pulse Link: https://otx.alienvault.com/pulse/6a86a70eb8b57f155e62d4f7
Pulse Author: AlienVault
Created: 2026-08-20 07:04:46

Be advised, this data is unverified and should be considered preliminary. Always do further verification.

#Asia #CentralAsia #China #CyberSecurity #Cyberespionage #DRat #Edge #Espionage #Google #Government #InfoSec #Microsoft #MicrosoftOffice #OTX #Office #OpenThreatExchange #Phishing #RAT #Rust #SideLoading #SpearPhishing #bot #AlienVault

Also, #survHEhmc (to run Bayesian modelling for survival analysis in HTA using HMC/pre-compiled @mcmc_stan models) and #survHMCinla (to run some Bayesian models for survival analysis in HTA using INLA) are now updated on GitHub and available via #drat repo)

https://github.com/giabaio/survHEhmc

https://github.com/giabaio/survHEinla

Oh #drat, there's already such a thing as a "St. Clement's cake" – I thought I'd cleverly invented the name by noting the nursery rhyme reference… I suppose it was an obvious observation.

I just duck-searched it on a whim to find documented recipes all over the place. lol

Interestingly this example has almond involved too, so my addition of marzipan isn't even inventive.

Someone once said "there's nothing new in the kitchen," and I suspect that's probably right.

https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/st-clements-cake/

Hmm, two hour delay on receiving AT&T phone messages today. Missed the call from the plumber (didn't ring here, either). #drat