At least one US government official
January 19, 2026
•[ spearphishing, espionage, DLL sideloading ]
HackRead summarized Acronis research describing an espionage-oriented spearphishing campaign targeting U.S. government entities using Venezuela-related news as bait. The described chain used a lure archive and DLL sideloading to load a backdoor dubbed LOTUSLITE, enabling remote access actions such as file collection and command execution on compromised systems. The article stated the researchers attributed the activity with moderate confidence to the China-backed group Mustang Panda (aka HoneyMyte).
