Silver Fox

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

Silver Fox

Silver Fox is a China-nexus threat group that spreads remote access trojans through fake software downloads, SEO poisoning and DLL sideloading. It began by targeting Chinese-speaking users with ValleyRAT and Gh0st RAT, and through 2026 it has widened to India, Japan, Taiwan and other regional targets.

China

Finance / Logistics

First seen

2022

Latest IOC

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Names and aliases

Group profile

Attack lifecycle

Malware and tooling

IOCs

Notable campaigns

NAMES AND ALIASES

SwimSnake, Void Arachne and the Valley Thieves

Silver Fox is tracked under several Chinese and Western names that all describe the same fake-software and RAT activity. They map to one entry among the adversaries we track, so a SwimSnake report and a Void Arachne advisory read as one group.

GROUP PROFILE

Fake software downloads as a delivery machine

Silver Fox runs a steady pipeline of trojanized installers. It poisons search results and builds convincing fake download sites for popular software, then uses DLL sideloading to run RATs that give full remote control of the victim's machine.

Our record places its targeting across finance, telecoms and logistics, with victims in Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. It sits in the same China-nexus space as Mustang Panda, though Silver Fox's work looks more like a high-volume malware operation than classic diplomatic espionage.

The group iterates fast. In 2026 it added researcher-evasion filtering to its fake-download sites, pushed a domestic ValleyRAT variant, and spun off a related malware-factory cluster that researchers track as PAPERMILL.

Facts:

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Victims reported in our records and posts:

ATTACK LIFECYCLE

Fake installers into sideloaded RATs

The stages below come from 2026 Silver Fox activity in posts we track on our IOC Hunter feed.

Initial Access

Spear-phishing remains the front door. In the 2026 campaign Hunt.io tracked as Operation Neusploit, APT28 sent convincing spear-phishing from already-compromised government accounts and abused a Microsoft Office security bypass (CVE-2026-21509) to kick off a fileless chain. A separate June 2026 cluster delivered the LameHug malware through spear-phishing ZIP archives using double-extension lures.

Initial Access

MALWARE AND TOOLING

ValleyRAT, Gh0st and a wide RAT bench

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

Silver Fox

IOCS FROM HUNT.IO PLATFORM

Latest IOCs

We currently track - IP indicators, - hosts, and - SHA256 hashes for Akira across - intelligence posts, with the most recent indicator dated -. The sample below is limited to indicators from the latest posts. It is not the full set.

Showing a sample of recent indicators

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Silver Fox

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete

Silver Fox

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

Fake downloads, researcher evasion and a malware factory

Recent reporting shows a high-volume operation refining its delivery and spawning related clusters.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.