The Iranian-origin threat actor known as Charming Kitten has been linked to a new set of attacks aimed at Middle East policy experts with a new backdoor called BASICSTAR by creating a fake webinar portal. Charming Kitten, also called APT35, CharmingCypress, Mint Sandstorm, TA453, and Yellow Garuda, has a history of orchestrating a wide range […]
High-profile individuals working on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. have been targeted by an Iranian cyber espionage group called Mint Sandstorm since November 2023. The threat actor “used bespoke phishing lures in an attempt to socially engineer targets into downloading malicious files,” […]
The Iranian nation-state actor known as MuddyWater has leveraged a newly discovered command-and-control (C2) framework called MuddyC2Go in its attacks on the telecommunications sector in Egypt, Sudan, and Tanzania. The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, is tracking the activity under the name Seedworm, which is also tracked under the monikers Boggy Serpens, Cobalt […]
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed that it’s responding to a cyber attack that involved the active exploitation of Unitronics programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to target the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in western Pennsylvania. The attack has been attributed to an Iranian-backed hacktivist collective known as Cyber Av3ngers. “Cyber threat actors […]
Iranian nation-state actors have been observed using a previously undocumented command-and-control (C2) framework called MuddyC2Go as part of attacks targeting Israel. “The framework’s web component is written in the Go programming language,” Deep Instinct security researcher Simon Kenin said in a technical report published Wednesday. The tool has been attributed to MuddyWater, an Iranian state-sponsored […]
Israeli higher education and tech sectors have been targeted as part of a series of destructive cyber attacks that commenced in January 2023 with an aim to deploy previously undocumented wiper malware. The intrusions, which took place as recently as October, have been attributed to an Iranian nation-state hacking crew it tracks under the name […]
An Iranian nation-state threat actor has been linked to a new wave of phishing attacks targeting Israel that’s designed to deploy an updated version of a Windows backdoor called PowerLess. Cybersecurity firm Check Point is tracking the activity cluster under its mythical creature handle Educated Manticore, which exhibits “strong overlaps” with a hacking crew known […]
The Iranian threat actor known as MuddyWater is continuing its time-tested tradition of relying on legitimate remote administration tools to commandeer targeted systems. While the nation-state group has previously employed ScreenConnect, RemoteUtilities, and Syncro, a new analysis from Group-IB has revealed the adversary’s use of the SimpleHelp remote support software in June 2022. MuddyWater, active […]
The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on Thursday warned of spear-phishing attacks mounted by Russian and Iranian state-sponsored actors for information-gathering operations. “The attacks are not aimed at the general public but targets in specified sectors, including academia, defense, government organizations, NGOs, think tanks, as well as politicians, journalists, and activists,” the NCSC said. […]
Iranian hackers broke into a key Israeli security organization on Wednesday, stole surveillance tape that caught one of the twin explosions that occurred in Jerusalem on that day, and then published the material online. Israeli officials authorized for publishing on Thursday that the tape was authentic and was collected by the Moses Staff group in […]
Iranian government-sponsored threat actors have been blamed for compromising a U.S. federal agency by taking advantage of the Log4Shell vulnerability in an unpatched VMware Horizon server. The details, which were shared by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), come in response to incident response efforts undertaken by the authority from mid-June through mid-July […]
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday announced sweeping sanctions against ten individuals and two entities backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their involvement in ransomware attacks at least since October 2020. The agency said the cyber activity mounted by the individuals is partially attributable to intrusion […]
Iranian state-sponsored actors are leaving no stone unturned to exploit unpatched systems running Log4j to target Israeli entities, indicating the vulnerability’s long tail for remediation. Microsoft attributed the latest set of activities to the umbrella threat group tracked as MuddyWater (aka Cobalt Ulster, Mercury, Seedworm, or Static Kitten), which is linked to the Iranian intelligence […]
A threat actor working to further Iranian goals is said to have been behind a set of damaging cyberattacks against Albanian government services in mid-July 2022. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant said the malicious activity against a NATO state represented a “geographic expansion of Iranian disruptive cyber operations.” The July 17 attacks, according to Albania’s National Agency […]
The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor tracked under the moniker Lyceum has turned to using a new custom .NET-based backdoor in recent campaigns directed against the Middle East. “The new malware is a .NET based DNS Backdoor which is a customized version of the open source tool ‘DIG.net,’” Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Avinash Kumar […]
A ransomware group with an Iranian operational connection has been linked to a string of file-encrypting malware attacks targeting organizations in Israel, the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Cybersecurity firm Secureworks attributed the intrusions to a threat actor it tracks under the moniker Cobalt Mirage, which it said is linked to an Iranian hacking crew dubbed […]
An Iranian-linked threat actor known as Rocket Kitten has been observed actively exploiting a recently patched VMware vulnerability to gain initial access and deploy the Core Impact penetration testing tool on vulnerable systems. Tracked as CVE-2022-22954 (CVSS score: 9.8), the critical issue concerns a case of remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability affecting VMware Workspace ONE […]
The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor known as MuddyWater has been attributed to a new swarm of attacks targeting Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula with the goal of deploying remote access trojans (RATs) on compromised systems. “The MuddyWater supergroup is highly motivated and can use unauthorized access to conduct espionage, intellectual property theft, and deploy ransomware […]
An Iranian geopolitical nexus threat actor has been uncovered deploying two new targeted malware that come with “simple” backdoor functionalities as part of an intrusion against an unnamed Middle East government entity in November 2021. Cybersecurity company Mandiant attributed the attack to an uncategorized cluster it’s tracking under the moniker UNC3313, which it assesses with […]
A “potentially destructive actor” aligned with the government of Iran is actively exploiting the well-known Log4j vulnerability to infect unpatched VMware Horizon servers with ransomware. Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne dubbed the group “TunnelVision” owing to their heavy reliance on tunneling tools, with overlaps in tactics observed to that of a broader group tracked under the moniker […]
An advanced persistent threat (APT) group with ties to Iran has refreshed its malware toolset to include a new backdoor dubbed Marlin as part of a long-running espionage campaign that started in April 2018. Slovak cybersecurity company ESET attributed the attacks — codenamed “Out to Sea” — to a threat actor called OilRig (aka APT34), […]