Pakistan Threat Landscape Report 2026

Key Insights from Pakistan’s Cyber Threat Landscape

• Public Administration Faces the Highest Exposure: Public Administration accounts for 47.71% of Dark Web threats, making government-related entities the primary target in Pakistan.
• Government-Related Phishing Is a Major Risk: National Security and International Affairs and Public Administration together account for 33.33% of phishing attacks.
• Data Theft Drives Dark Web Activity: Data breach and compromise represents 40.85% of Dark Web threat categories and 39.52% of threat types.
• Data and Access Threats Dominate the Landscape: Data breach and compromise combined with Unauthorized Access and Credentials accounts for over 52% of Dark Web activity.
• Information and Education Are Also Highly Targeted: Information accounts for 13.74% of Dark Web threats, followed by Educational Services at 10.69%.
• Credential Abuse Supports Larger Compromise: Unauthorized Access and Credentials accounts for 13% of threat types, showing how stolen logins and access listings can lead to broader data breaches.
• BlueLocker Leads Ransomware Activity: BlueLocker is responsible for 36.4% of ransomware incidents targeting Pakistan, followed by The Gentlemen at 12.1% and Beast at 6.1%.
• Ransomware Activity Remains Fragmented: The “Others” category accounts for 45.5% of ransomware incidents, showing that smaller and emerging groups remain active.
• Financial Phishing Outpaces Financial Dark Web Exposure: Finance and Banking together account for 13.34% of phishing attacks, compared with Finance and Insurance at 8.78% of Dark Web threats.
• Phishing Infrastructure Is Often Recycled: Le Monde-themed French and English page titles account for nearly 25% of phishing attacks, suggesting reused infrastructure from campaigns built for French-speaking regions.
• HTTPS Is No Longer a Reliable Trust Signal: 95.2% of phishing sites targeting Pakistan use HTTPS, making the browser padlock unreliable as a safety indicator.

Why This Report Matters

Pakistan’s threat landscape shows that government and public-sector exposure sit at the center of both Dark Web and phishing activity. Dark Web threats focus heavily on public administration data, credentials, and access, while phishing campaigns target national security, public administration, delivery services, finance, banking, telecommunications, and information services.

For government, education, finance, telecom, and public-facing organizations, early visibility into leaked databases, access listings, phishing infrastructure, and ransomware activity is critical. The dominance of HTTPS-enabled phishing also shows that awareness programs must move beyond simple trust signals and focus on domain verification, unexpected login pages, and credential protection.

Take Action Now

• Dark Web Monitoring: Detect leaked databases, exposed credentials, citizen records, and access listings tied to Pakistani organizations.
• Ransomware Intelligence: Track BlueLocker, The Gentlemen, Beast, and smaller ransomware groups targeting Pakistan.
• Phishing Detection & Response: Identify government-related, finance, delivery-service, French-language, redirect-based, and HTTPS-enabled phishing campaigns.
• Access Security: Strengthen MFA, monitor privileged accounts, rotate exposed credentials, and reduce credential-based attack paths.
• Public-Sector Risk Monitoring: Track exposure affecting public administration, national security, education, and other data-rich government-linked entities.