China-Linked SilkParasite APT Uses Seven RATs and Google Drive to Spy on Central Asia

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A China-nexus threat actor tracked as SilkParasite has been conducting a high-severity espionage campaign against government and economic policy organizations across Central Asia. Attackers deliver password-protected RAR archives containing malicious Office documents that, once opened, use DLL side-loading to deploy multiple remote access trojans including DriveSilkRAT and CookiETagRAT. DriveSilkRAT uses Google Drive as its command-and-control channel while CookiETagRAT hides C2 communications inside standard HTTP Cookie and ETag headers, making malicious traffic blend with legitimate web activity. Security researchers at Bitdefender identified at least seven distinct RATs in the campaign, with structural similarities across different programming languages suggesting possible AI-assisted malware development. Organizations are advised to monitor for Office processes spawning signed applications that load adjacent DLLs, unusual Google Drive API calls, and abnormal WMI child process activity.

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