HollowQuill
- First seen
- 2023-04-01 00:00:00
- Primary motivation
- espionage
- Sophistication
- advanced
- Resource level
- government
- Actor type
- nation-state
- Profile updated
- 2026-07-07 12:20:57
Targeted industries: defense-and-aerospace education-and-nonprofits government-and-public-sector
Targeted regions: country_code:ru
Context
SEQRITE Labs APT-Team has been tracking and has uncovered a campaign targeting the Baltic State Technical University, a well-known institution for various defense, aerospace, and advanced engineering programs that contribute to Russia’s military-industrial complex. Tracked as Operation HollowQuill, the campaign leverages weaponized decoy documents masquerading as official research invitations to infiltrate academic, governmental, and defense-related networks. The threat entity delivers a malicious RAR file which contains a .NET malware dropper, which further drops other Golang based shellcode loader along with legitimate OneDrive application and a decoy-based PDF with a final Cobalt Strike payload.
Reports & references
- seqrite.com — Operation Hollowquill Russian Rd Networks Malware Pdf (report)