Hackers Hit Indian Defense, Energy Sectors with Malware Posing as Air Force Invite

EclecticIQ researchers describe "Operation FlightNight," a focused cyber-espionage campaign observed from March 7, 2024, targeting Indian government bodies and energy firms. Attackers used phishing delivering an ISO containing an LNK that ran a hidden binary (scholar.exe) and displayed a decoy PDF; the payload is a modified open-source stealer (HackBrowserData) expanded to harvest documents and browser caches and to exfiltrate data via Slack channels. Approximately 8.81 GB of sensitive data was taken, and the campaign shows reuse of open-source tools and legitimate platforms to reduce detection and development cost.