Pakistan-Linked SideCopy Targets Afghanistan Finance Ministry with Xeno RAT
Jun 02, 2026
Cyber Espionage / Threat Intelligence
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a spear-phishing campaign likely undertaken by the Pakistan-aligned SideCopy group targeting Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance with an open-source remote access trojan called Xeno RAT . "The campaign opens with a spear phishing delivery - a ZIP archive containing a malicious LNK file bearing a carefully crafted Pashto-language filename," Seqrite Labs researcher Dixit Panchal said in a technical breakdown of the activity. Also targeted as part of the campaign are provincial revenue and finance directorates, Pashto-speaking government officials, and provincial-level government employees. The campaign has been codenamed Operation XENOFISCAL. The choice of Pashto for the lure file is a deliberate choice on the part of the attacker, as it's the main language spoken in the Afghan government circles. This aspect reflects the attacker's familiarity with the target environment. SideCopy is the name given to a P...
