NSFOCUS Monthly APT Insights – February 2026
Regional APT Threat Situation
In February 2026, the global threat hunting system of FUYING Lab detected a total of 21 APT attack activities.
NSFOCUS Monthly APT Insights – February 2026
Regional APT Threat Situation
In February 2026, the global threat hunting system of FUYING Lab detected a total of 21 APT attack activities. These activities were primarily concentrated in regions including South Asia, East Asia, and Central Asia, as shown in the figure below.
Regarding the activity levels of different groups, the most active APT groups in this month were APT36 from South Asia, while other relatively active groups included Konni from East Asia, and VortexWerewolf, whose regional attribution remains undefined.
The most prevalent intrusion method in this month’s incidents was spear-phishing email attacks, accounting for 95% of all attack events. A small number of threat actors also utilized vulnerability exploitations for infiltration (5%).
In February 2026, the primary target industries for APT groups were government agencies, accounting for 33%, followed by organizations and individuals and military institutions, both accounting for 24%. Other attack targets included the financial sector.
South Asia
This month, the APT activities in South Asia were primarily initiated by known APT groups, with victims including Indian military institutions, organizations or individuals, government departments, Pakistani government departments, and government departments in Bangladesh.
In terms of attack tactics, this month’s APT activities in South Asia mainly involved spear-phishing email attacks, with typical decoys including an email targeting the Indian Ministry of Finance’s Department of Financial Services. The attackers used a Trojan-infected email, which appeared as an official notice from the Indian Ministry of Finance’s Department of Financial Services. The email’s content promoted ……
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East Asia
This month, APT activities in East Asia were primarily initiated by known APT groups, with all victims being South Korean organizations, including government agencies, financial institutions, and individuals. In terms of attack tactics, all APT activities in East Asia this month were launched through spear-phishing emails.
Regarding spear-phishing, the typical decoy was a compliance audit checklist for Korean enterprise information systems/software development lifecycle. This document is a widely used IT operations and R&D control audit template in highly regulated industries such as finance and public utilities, primarily used ……
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Central Asia
This month, the APT activities in Central Asia were primarily initiated by known APT groups, with victims including the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organizations or individuals in the Middle East, etc. In terms of attack tactics, the APT activities in Central Asia this month involved both exploitation of vulnerabilities and spear-phishing attacks.
This month, the Central Asian threat actors used spear-phishing emails containing encrypted archives to lure Iraqi government officials into clicking. Upon extraction, the archive contained an EXE-based loader program. Once EXE was executed ……
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Global Key APT Events
Event Name
Related Groups
The MuddyWater group launched the Operation Olalampo campaign targeting the Middle East and North Africa
MuddyWater
Multiple attackers exploited the security vulnerabilities of OpenClaw to conduct cyberattacks
Unconfirmed
Interpretation of Key APT Events
The MuddyWater Group Launched the Operation Olalampo Campaign Targeting the Middle East and North Africa
The APT group MuddyWater planned and executed a large-scale cyberespionage operation codenamed “Operation Olalampo” at the beginning of 2026. The operation primarily targeted government agencies and critical infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa. During the attack, the group deployed multiple newly developed specialized Trojan programs.
In this operation, MuddyWater distributed a large number of Microsoft Office documents or spreadsheets with malicious macros. The primary goal of these documents was ……
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Group Name
MuddyWater
Appear Time
2017
Attack Target
Afghanistan, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan ……
In the recent Operation Olalampo campaign, the MuddyWater group’s specialized Trojan, CHAR, is suspected to have been developed with AI assistance. This marks the first observed instance of an APT group using AI to develop malware.
Multiple Attackers Exploited the Security Vulnerabilities of OpenClaw to Conduct Cyberattacks
In early February, an open-source AI application called OpenClaw attracted widespread global attention among AI users. However, its significant security vulnerabilities also triggered a wave of new cyberattacks targeting this application.
OpenClaw (formerly known as Clawdbot / Moltbot) is an open-source autonomous AI assistant project initiated by experienced developer Peter Steinberger at the end of 2025. This application is deployed on personal computer devices and can perform computer tasks based on user verbal commands, including file operations, network operations, and using various computer software.
The OpenClaw project brought about a storm of security issues, including permission problems, malicious skill issues, credential leaks, prompt injection vulnerabilities, and numerous other flaws that affected all users who tried the project.
On January 29, someone exploited a logical vulnerability within OpenClaw itself to create a phishing website designed to lure OpenClaw into accessing it and stealing user credentials stored by the application. This vulnerability was quickly confirmed as CVE-2026-25253, which could also be combined with ……
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OpenClaw’s massive security problems have been as remarkable as its explosive growth. Because the project was developed almost entirely through vibe coding, it contains design flaws across both its underlying infrastructure and higher-level implementation that would be considered unacceptable under traditional information security standards. Fortunately, the OpenClaw maintainers are actively working to resolve the known security issues.
As a highly integrated AI framework with system-level permissions, OpenClaw’s attack surface is far more complex than that of traditional chatbots. From a security analysis perspective, the potential attack surface of OpenClaw can be summarized into three layers: the Architecture Layer, the Interaction Layer, and the Extension Layer……
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The post NSFOCUS Monthly APT Insights – February 2026 appeared first on NSFOCUS, Inc., a global network and cyber security leader, protects enterprises and carriers from advanced cyber attacks..
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from NSFOCUS, Inc., a global network and cyber security leader, protects enterprises and carriers from advanced cyber attacks. authored by NSFOCUS. Read the original post at: https://nsfocusglobal.com/nsfocus-monthly-apt-insights-february-2026/
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