Operation HookedWing: A Sophisticated Phishing Campaign
A phishing campaign that has been ongoing for more than four years has made hundreds of victims across multiple industries, according to a report by SOCRadar. Dubbed Operation HookedWing, the campaign was first documented in 2022 but has sustained activity and adapted its infrastructure while keeping core patterns largely unchanged.
Over the course of four years, more than 2,000 user credentials across over 500 organizations in the aviation and travel, critical infrastructure, energy, financial, government, logistics, public administration, and technology sectors were stolen as part of the campaign. The campaign's targeting pattern is not random, focusing on infrastructure of high geopolitical relevance, with a particular interest in environments with access to sensitive information, critical operations, or high-privilege credentials.
Infrastructure and Tactics
Between 2022 and 2024, Operation HookedWing used GitHub domains with English content and compromised servers as infrastructure, and the attacks mainly featured Microsoft and Outlook themes. In 2024 and 2025, the threat actor expanded its targeting with French content, continuing to use GitHub, compromised servers, and previously observed phishing themes. Starting in 2025, the threat actor has expanded both the active infrastructure and lures, obfuscating GitHub domain naming, adding more themes, and deploying additional landing pages.
SOCRadar identified two dozen command-and-control (C&C) servers associated with Operation HookedWing, as well as over 100 GitHub domains, and over a dozen distribution domains on other platforms. The campaign relies on phishing emails impersonating human resources or colleagues, or posing as notifications, with a simple structure designed to convey authority and urgency without raising suspicion.
Technical Details
Many of the emails contain links to GitHub repositories, with some of them pointing to intermediaries hosted on other platforms. The landing pages simulate Microsoft Outlook behavior through a full-screen pre-loader and personalize the displayed text based on the victim organization. A background script performs email and URL validation, injects a PHP form with pre-filled fields to collect the victims’ credentials, and retrieves geolocation data about the victim.
When the victim clicks the sign-in button on the page, the attacker receives, in a single record, the email, password, IP address, full geolocation, source URL, and the victim organization domain. This introduces an important behavioral element, as the victim's perception of the environment's credibility is reinforced by the display of their organization's name or related information.
Impact and Conclusion
The Operation HookedWing campaign highlights the importance of vigilance and robust security measures to prevent such attacks. The campaign's ability to adapt and evolve its infrastructure and tactics over time demonstrates the need for continuous monitoring and improvement of security protocols. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it is essential for organizations to prioritize cybersecurity and invest in effective measures to protect against sophisticated phishing campaigns like Operation HookedWing.
Related campaigns, such as the Microsoft Warns of Sophisticated Phishing Campaign Targeting US Organizations, New Bluekit Phishing Kit Features AI Assistant, and Tycoon 2FA Loses Phishing Kit Crown Amid Surge in Attacks, demonstrate the ongoing threat of phishing attacks and the need for organizations to remain vigilant and proactive in their security efforts.
Source: SecurityWeek