Iran-based Cyber Actors Enabling Ransomware Attacks on US Organizations

Summary The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, and the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center DC3 are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA to warn network defenders that, as of August 2024, a group of Iran-based cyber actors...

Microsoft: Iranian Nation-State Group Sanctioned by U.S. Behind Charlie Hebdo Hack

An Iranian nation-state group sanctioned by the U.S. government has been attributed to the hack of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January 2023. Microsoft, which disclosed details of the incident, is tracking the activity cluster under its chemical element-themed moniker...

MERCURY leveraging Log4j 2 vulnerabilities in unpatched systems to target Israeli organizations

In recent weeks, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC and Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team detected Iran-based threat actor MERCURY leveraging exploitation of Log4j 2 vulnerabilities in SysAid applications against organizations all located in Israel. MSTIC assesses with high...

Silent Librarian Goes Back to School with Global Research-Stealing Effort

The Silent Librarian campaign has re-emerged for the fall school session, actively targeting students and faculty at universities via spear-phishing campaigns. The threat group also known as TA407 and Cobalt Dickens, which operates out of Iran, has been on the prowl since the start of the 2019...

Iran-Based Threat Actor Exploits VPN Vulnerabilities

The Cybersecurity Security and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have released a Joint Cybersecurity Advisory on an Iran-based malicious cyber actor targeting several U.S. federal agencies and other U.S.-based networks. This Advisory analyzes the thre...

Charming Kitten Uses Fake Interview Requests to Target Public Figures

The Iran-based hacking group Charming Kitten has resurfaced with a new campaign that uses fake interviews to target public figures to launch phishing attacks and steal victims’ email-account information. In a report released Wednesday, security researchers at Certfa Lab say they discovered the...

Iran Targets Mideast Oil with ZeroCleare Wiper Malware

A freshly-discovered wiper malware dubbed “ZeroCleare” has been deployed to target the energy and industrial sectors in the Middle East. According to IBM’s X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services IRIS, ZeroCleare so-named because of the program database pathname of its binary file was...

IT threat evolution Q1 2019

Targeted attacks and malware campaigns Go Zebrocy Zebrocy was first observed being used as a Sofacy backdoor in 2015. However, the collection of cases where this tool has been used mean that we consider it a subset of activity in its own right. On the basis of this threat actor's past behaviour, ...

Chafer used Remexi malware to spy on Iran-based foreign diplomatic entities

Executive Summary Throughout the autumn of 2018 we analyzed a long-standing and still active at that time cyber-espionage campaign that was primarily targeting foreign diplomatic entities based in Iran. The attackers were using an improved version of Remexi in what the victimology suggests might ...