Cybersecurity

Elite Phishing: HookedWing Breaches Critical Global Sectors

By Sentinel News Editorial Team

May 11, 2026 Source: Securityweek 12 views

A sophisticated, multi-year phishing operation has compromised critical sectors worldwide, reportedly ensnaring hundreds of organizations and thousands of user credentials. Dubbed 'Operation HookedWing,' this persistent threat has demonstrated significant adaptability, continuously evolving its tactics and infrastructure to evade detection.

For over four years, a stealthy phishing campaign has systematically breached more than five hundred entities across vital global industries, including critical infrastructure and government, acquiring credentials from thousands of users.
Adversaries employ highly personalized lures, often impersonating HR or colleagues, directing victims to sophisticated landing pages that mimic trusted services like Microsoft Outlook, customized with the target organization's details.
The campaign, named 'Operation HookedWing,' has continually updated its attack infrastructure, leveraging numerous GitHub domains and compromised servers while expanding its content languages and obfuscation techniques to maintain operational longevity.

Intelligence briefing: Why this matters: The sustained success and adaptive nature of such operations highlight the urgent need for enhanced multi-factor authentication, rigorous employee cybersecurity training, and proactive threat intelligence sharing across all critical sectors to thwart highly motivated adversaries.

A phishing campaign that has been ongoing for more than four years has made hundreds of victims across multiple industries, SOCRadar reports.

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.

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 ly 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.

“Analysis of recovered logs and identified infrastructure reveals a targeting pattern that is not random, as it focuses on infrastructure of high geopolitical relevance,” SOCRadar says.

“Victim selection suggests a particular interest in environments with access to sensitive information, critical operations, or high-privilege credentials that can be sold or used by other adversaries,” the company adds.

Operation HookedWing relies on phishing emails impersonating human resources or colleagues, or posing as notifications. The messages have a simple structure and are designed to convey authority and urgency without raising suspicion.

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.

“This introduces an important behavioral element. If the victim watches the loading screen, seeing their own organization name or something related to the email reinforces the credibility of the environment before the form appears,” SOCRadar notes.

In the meantime, 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”, SOCRadar explains.

Related: Microsoft Warns of Sophisticated Phishing Campaign Targeting US Organizations

Related: New Bluekit Phishing Kit Features AI Assistant

Related: Tycoon 2FA Loses Phishing Kit Crown Amid Surge in Attacks

Analysis

This long-running campaign underscores a concerning trend where threat actors combine traditional social engineering with dynamic technical infrastructure to achieve persistent access. The clear focus on geopolitically significant targets suggests more than just financial gain, pointing towards intelligence gathering or strategic pre-positioning by advanced persistent threats. The campaign's ability to remain effective for years, despite initial documentation, serves as a stark reminder that defensive postures must match the adversaries' commitment to continuous evolution.

phishingcybersecuritythreat intelligencesocial engineeringcredentialsaptcritical infrastructure

📰 Primary Source: Securityweek