Earth Simnavaz (aka APT34) Levies Advanced Cyberattacks Against Middle East

Recently, Trend Micro has been tracking Earth Simnavaz (also known as APT34 and OilRig), a cyber espionage group. This group primarily targets organizations in the energy sector, particularly those involved in oil and gas, as well as other infrastructure. It Read More …

UNC1860 and the Temple of Oats: Iran’s Hidden Hand in Middle Eastern Networks

UNC1860 is a persistent and opportunistic Iranian state-sponsored threat actor that is likely affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). A key feature of UNC1860 is its collection of specialized tooling and passive backdoors that Mandiant believes supports Read More …

From Albania to the Middle East: The Scarred Manticore is listening

Check Point Research, in collaboration with Sygnia’s Incident Response Team, has been tracking and responding to the activities of Scarred Manticore, an Iranian nation-state threat actor that primarily targets government and telecommunication sectors in the Middle East. Scarred Manticore, linked Read More …

Crambus: New Campaign Targets Middle Eastern Government

The Iranian Crambus espionage group (aka OilRig, APT34) staged an eight-month-long intrusion against a government in the Middle East between February and September 2023. During the compromise, the attackers stole files and passwords and, in one case, installed a PowerShell Read More …

New PowerExchange malware backdoors Microsoft Exchange servers

A new PowerShell-based malware dubbed PowerExchange was used in attacks linked to APT34 Iranian state hackers to backdoor on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers. After infiltrating the mail server via a phishing email containing an archived malicious executable, the threat actors deployed Read More …

New APT34 Malware Targets The Middle East

On December 2022, Trend Micro researchers identified a suspicious executable (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.MSIL.REDCAP.AD) that was dropped and executed on multiple machines. The investigation led them to link this attack to advanced persistent threat (APT) group APT34, and Read More …

APT34 hackers exposed in a highly targeted espionage campaign

Threat analysts have spotted a novel attack attributed to the Iranian hacking group known as APT34 group or Oilrig, who targeted a Jordanian diplomat with custom-crafted tools. The attack involved advanced anti-detection and anti-analysis techniques and had some characteristics that Read More …

Iranian hacker group becomes first known APT to weaponize DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH)

An Iranian hacking group known as Oilrig has become the first publicly known threat actor to incorporate the DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol in its attacks. Speaking in a webinar last week, Vincente Diaz, a malware analyst for antivirus maker Kaspersky, said Read More …

OilRig Targets Middle Eastern Telecom Organization and Adds Novel C2 Channel with Steganography to Its Inventory

While analyzing an attack against a Middle Eastern telecommunications organization, Unit 42 has discovered a variant of an OilRig-associated tool we call RDAT using a novel email-based command and control (C2) channel that relied on a technique known as steganography Read More …

Iran-Backed APTs Collaborate on 3-Year ‘Fox Kitten’ Global Spy Campaign

Two Iran-backed APTs could be working together on a sprawling, three-year campaign to compromise high-value organizations from the IT, telecom, oil and gas, aviation, government and security sectors in Israel and around the world, according to a report by researchers Read More …