Tail of deception: Framing the blue jays¶

“In 2025, attribution is a hall of mirrors. Your false flags should have the defenders arguing with each other.”

False flag fundamentals¶

Because nothing says “professional” like blaming someone else for your chaos.

Objectives:

• ✔ Blame your mess on rival APTs (e.g., make Russia look like it’s moonlighting as China)

• ✔ Maintain plausible deniability, which is especially helpful when you’re a government with a PR team

• ✔ Spark internal witch hunts (“Who gave Bob root access again?”)

• ✔ Pour gasoline on geopolitical tensions and watch the fireworks

False flag techniques: 2025 Edition¶

Linguistic deception¶

Why use your native tongue when you can cosplay as a foreign intelligence agency?

Nation-State context:

• Add Mandarin or Cyrillic comments in malware (Google Translate is the new SIGINT)

• Change system timezone to fake origin

# Pretend you're in Shanghai
Set-TimeZone -Id "China Standard Time"

Corporate Espionage:

Create fake employee accounts just before exfiltrate:

# Totally not suspicious
New-Mailbox -Name "The Joker" -UserPrincipalName j.assange@company.com

Code borrowing & weaponised open source¶

Nothing says “elite” like Ctrl+C from GitHub.

NGO/Small Business context:

• Clone Lazarus Group-style GitHub repos

• Sprinkle in fake foreign identifiers

# Hangul = Instant panic
$fakeSig = "조선민주주의인민공화국"  # DPRK in Hangul

Nation-state grade: Recompile tools with Iranian APT34’s digital signature, because branding matters.

Infrastructure spoofing¶

Where you host matters. And Belarus is totally innocent, right?

• Rent VPSs in “attributable” countries

• Use VPNs with rival-nation exit nodes (Iranian IPs are always a hit)

Behavioural misdirection¶

Why brute force when you can blame Carl from IT?

Corporate Espionage:

• Abuse ex-employee credentials (bonus points if they were fired)

• Use real IT tools (e.g., SCCM) for lateral movement

Nation-State shenanigans: Stage “hacktivist” leaks on Telegram (because Telegram = instant credibility)

Real-World scenarios (Totally fictional, obviously)¶

Framing China for financial mischief¶

Target: A U.S. bank that really should’ve invested more in detection.

Steps:

• Deploy ransomware with Mandarin error messages

• Route C2 through an Alibaba Cloud instance

• Drop malware with Chinese APT hallmarks

Outcome: The FBI blames the PLA. Meanwhile, the real attackers cash out in Monero and toast your confusion.

NGO Hit with “Hacktivist” flair¶

Target: An environmental NGO about to get bought out.

Steps:

• Tag their site with “Anonymous Brazil” logos (graphic design is your passion)

• Leak juicy emails from a conveniently hacked ProtonMail

• Leave behind a Brazilian keyboard layout for that spicy attribution

Outcome: NGO blames Brazil. Corporate raiders sip coffee and continue the acquisition.

Small business, big problem¶

Target: HVAC vendor. Real goal? Their defence contractor clients.

Steps:

• Slip malware through their RMM tool

• Sign it with stolen Korean certs

• Trigger antivirus panic with “KimJongRAT”

Outcome: Victim yells “North Korea!” to CISA. Meanwhile, your red team is already inside the contractor’s network.

Countermeasures (OpSec testing checklist)¶

“The best false flags are 70% real, just enough to make defenders argue in Slack for two weeks.”