GearDoor

The cyber risk landscape for 2026 is heavily influenced by regional conflicts, with PRC actors pre-positioning in critical infrastructure edge devices for strategic leverage. Russian actors are escalating hybrid warfare and OT/ICS disruption across Europe, while Iranian groups have decentralized to conduct wiper attacks and target cloud infrastructure. Concurrently, eCrime actors are exploiting these geopolitical tensions to deploy ransomware and infostealers, increasingly targeting hypervisors and industrial operations.

Check Point Research identified Silver Dragon, a Chinese-nexus APT group likely affiliated with APT41, targeting organizations in Southeast Asia and Europe. The group utilizes public-facing server exploits and phishing to deploy custom loaders that establish persistence via AppDomain hijacking and service manipulation. These loaders deliver Cobalt Strike and a novel Google Drive-based backdoor called GearDoor.