Operation Sindoor: Cyber-Kinetic Tactics

• Operation Sindoor is a coordinated military and cyber initiative that integrates conventional force with advanced cyber tactics to dismantle terror infrastructure.
• The campaign deployed multi-stage malware using macro-enabled attacks and sophisticated RAT techniques, effectively evading hash- and behavior-based detection.
• Enhanced telemetry via custom Osquery extensions enabled real-time correlation of process, file, and network events for precise incident response.

Operation Sindoor refers to a coordinated military and cyber response led by India to dismantle terror infrastructure originating from Pakistan, with a particular focus on the intersection of conventional force and sophisticated cyberwarfare techniques. In this context, adversarial entities—specifically Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups such as APT36 (Transparent Tribe)—deployed a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) campaign targeting Indian critical infrastructure, leveraging malicious payloads embedded in what appeared to be legitimate documents. The campaign is distinguished by its technical depth, multi-stage deployment, and extensive use of adversarial tactics that targeted both operational capacity and strategic information flows within the Indian defense ecosystem (Paliwal et al., 5 Oct 2025).

1. Threat Actor Tactics and Malware Deployment

The primary threat vector involved spear-phishing campaigns using documents crafted to exploit public concern around contemporaneous events, such as the Pahalgam terror attack. The operational workflow was as follows:

1. Payload Delivery: Victims received macro-enabled Microsoft PowerPoint add-ins (.ppam) disguised as official reports.
2. Execution Chain: Upon opening the file, VBA macros triggered automatic deployment of the malware payload.
3. Process Masquerading & Persistence:
   • The initial dropped file appeared as “WEISTE.jpg”.
   • Subsequently, it was renamed to “jnmxrvt hcsm.exe” and executed from a POWERPNT.EXE process context.
   • This executable is Crimson RAT, providing over 20 C2 functions (e.g., keylogging, screen capture, credential theft).
4. Technical Identification: The malware was embedded with clear indicators, including SHA-256 hashes (e.g., $8cbd47119356\dots e0e95$) and development-specific Program Database (PDB) path markers.

The campaign effectively exploited legitimate Windows applications as benign-looking parent processes, thus eluding simplistic behavioral and hash-based detection. The file rename step, from WEISTE.jpg to jnmxrvt hcsm.exe, exemplifies the adversary's obfuscation strategy.

2. Telemetry Acquisition and Analysis Framework

Detection efforts centered on constructing a robust telemetry pipeline using Osquery, an open-source endpoint visibility tool that models the system state as a set of relational database tables. Notably, standard Windows Osquery deployments lacked several telemetry points deemed critical for attack reconstruction. To address this, a custom Osquery extension was developed to enhance event visibility:

• Primary Tables Monitored:
  • win_process_events: Tracks process creation/termination and records hierarchical relationships (parent→child).
  • win_file_events: Captures file I/O actions (CREATE, WRITE, RENAME) along with cryptographic hashes (MD5, SHA-256) and file target paths.
  • win_socket_events: Logs network connections, recording remote IPs, ports, and protocol metadata.

This telemetry is gathered via Osquery’s daemon mode, with logging configured through the --logger_plugin=filesystem flag, outputting to osqueryd.results.log. The approach correlates temporal and structural event data linking process creation, file modification, and network activity via event UUIDs and process GUIDs:

$$\text{Telemetry\_Event} = \text{Process\_Event} \oplus \text{File\_Event} \oplus \text{Socket\_Event}$$

using $\oplus$ as the operator for multi-modal, time-aligned event correlation.

3. Correlation-Based Detection Rule Construction

A declarative SQL-based detection rule operationalizes these telemetry streams for effective real-time RAT detection. This detection logic is characterized by:

• Union of Multi-Domain Telemetry: SQL UNION (specifically UNION [ALL](https://www.emergentmind.com/topics/cascading-annealed-language-learning-all)) constructs combine queries over both win_file_events and win_socket_events, allowing composite signatures.
• Indicator Set:
  • File actions by POWERPNT.EXE or “jnmxrvt hcsm.exe” involving known malicious hashes, or specific renaming behavior (e.g., WEISTE.jpg → jnmxrvt hcsm.exe).
  • Socket actions by these processes to known-attributed C2 infrastructure (e.g., 93.127.133.58:19821).

Sample Query Structure:

SELECT ... FROM win_file_events WHERE (process_name ILIKE '%\jnmxrvt hcsm.exe' AND action IN ('FILE_RENAME', 'FILE_CREATE') AND (target_path ILIKE '%jnmxrvt hcsm.exe' OR target_path ILIKE '%WEISTE.jpg%')) UNION ALL SELECT ... FROM win_socket_events WHERE (process_name ILIKE '%\POWERPNT.EXE' OR process_name ILIKE '%\jnmxrvt hcsm.exe') AND remote_address IN (...)

This unification strategy leverages both atomic indicators (hash, filename, command-line) and compound event relationships, enhancing both precision and recall compared to monolithic or siloed rulesets.

4. Technical Sophistication and Stealth Tactics

The adversary’s operational sophistication was manifested in several dimensions:

• Living-Off-the-Land Binaries (LOLBins): Use of native Office applications (POWERPNT.EXE) minimized anomalous process footprints.
• Staged Infection Chain: Selective file renaming and delayed execution made in-memory and runtime behavioral detection more challenging.
• Development Artifacts: Binary compiled on April 21, 2025, carried PDB strings offering attribution and evidence of bespoke development cycles closely timed to contemporaneous physical events.

These techniques demonstrate an advanced capability for blending malware operations with legitimate user activity, requiring high-fidelity, context-aware detection to differentiate benign from malicious behaviors.

5. Strategic and Operational Implications

The cyber activities during Operation Sindoor represent a paradigmatic shift in combined arms conflict, where digital and kinetic domains reinforce each other. Notable implications extracted from the campaign’s analysis include:

• Legitimate Software Exploitation: Demonstrated viability of leveraging trusted enterprise applications for covert payload delivery and execution.
• Telemetry Centrality: Emphasizes the necessity for comprehensive, extensible endpoint telemetry as a precondition for timely detection and effective incident response in military operational theaters.
• Cyber-physical Interplay: Early compilation and deployment of Crimson RAT prior to the Pahalgam incident imply adversarial foreknowledge and coordination, highlighting the role of cyber capability in shaping or anticipating physical engagements.
• Rapid Countermeasure Deployment: Provision of an operationalized, endpoint-deployable detection rule offers both a template and a reactive defense mechanism for future campaigns exhibiting similar TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures).

6. Contribution to Cyber Defense Methodologies

The analysis and framework derived during Operation Sindoor serves as both a case study and a methodological advancement for cyber defense in state-level conflict scenarios. Its contributions are threefold:

1. Dissection of a Complex Multi-Stage Campaign: Provides detailed behavioral and forensic traces essential for understanding APT operations against critical infrastructure.
2. Practically-Oriented Detection Engineering: Moves beyond theoretical analysis by delivering extensible, empirically validated detection logic suitable for large-scale endpoint deployment.
3. Template for Rapid Incident Response: Establishes a workflow—anchored in enhanced Osquery-driven telemetry—that can be rapidly adapted to future threats sharing analogous behavioral or infrastructural signatures.

Collectively, these advances inform both national and cross-sectoral strategies for cyber resilience, and supply a tactical reference point for the co-evolution of offensive and defensive capabilities in the context of technologically dense military operations.