Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a fresh set of campaigns targeting government and diplomatic organizations in Romania, Spain, and Türkiye between late September 2025 and early April 2026.
These campaigns, per Recorded Future Insikt Group, have led to the deployment of a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed HOOKEDGE, a lightweight Windows batch script that's distributed via macro-enabled Microsoft Word documents bearing diplomatic-themed lures. Early versions are said to have impersonated Spanish government material, before switching to a social engineering approach a month later.
The activity has been attributed with moderate confidence to a Russian state-sponsored hacking group known as APT28 (aka Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard). It's tracked by the Mastercard-owned cybersecurity and threat intelligence firm under the moniker BlueDelta.
This determination is based on what Recorded Future described as significant code and tradecraft overlap between HOOKEDGE and HEADLACE, a modular Windows backdoor previously put to use by APT28 in attacks targeting diplomats since April 2023.
This includes similarities in core architecture and the abuse of webhook[.]site services for command-and-control (C2), payload staging, and data exfiltration, thereby allowing malicious activity to blend in with regular network traffic and obviating the need for setting up dedicated infrastructure.
