Security News
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. The attacks are said to have been orchestrated via spear-phishing messages to gain initial access, followed by taking advantage of publicly available offensive security tools and remote access software for lateral movement and maintaining access to the environment.
An investigation into the cyberattack targeting Iranian national media corporation, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, in late January 2022 resulted in the deployment of a wiper malware and other custom implants, as the country's national infrastructure continues to face a wave of attacks aimed at inflicting serious damage. The 10-second attack, which took place on January 27, involved the breach of state broadcaster IRIB to air pictures of Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization leaders Maryam and Massoud Rajavi alongside a call for the assassination of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
An Iranian-aligned hacking group tracked as TunnelVision was spotted exploiting Log4j on VMware Horizon servers to breach corporate networks in the Middle East and the United States. Security analysts at SentinelLabs who have been tracking the activity chose that name due to the group's heavy reliance on tunneling tools, which help them hide their activities from detecting solutions.
Footage of opposition leaders calling for the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader ran on several of the nation's state-run TV channels in late January after a state-sponsored cyber-attack on Iranian state broadcaster IRIB. The incident - one of a series of politically motivated attacks in Iran that have occurred in the last year - included the use of a wiper that potentially ties it to a previous high-profile attack on Iran's national transportation networks in July, according to researchers from Check Point Research. Though the earlier attacks have been attributed to Iran state-sponsored actor Indra, researchers believe a copycat actor was behind the IRIB attack based on the malware and tools used in the attack, they said in a report published Friday.
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 Phosphorus as well as Charming Kitten and Nemesis Kitten.
An advanced persistent threat 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 - code named Out to Sea - to a threat actor called OilRig, while also conclusively connecting its activities to a second Iranian group tracked under the name Lyceum.
An advanced persistent threat group with links to Iran has updated its malware toolset to include a novel PowerShell-based implant called PowerLess Backdoor, according to new research published by Cybereason. The Boston-headquartered cybersecurity company attributed the malware to a hacking group known as Charming Kitten, while also calling out the backdoor's evasive PowerShell execution.
Details have emerged about a previously undocumented malware campaign undertaken by the Iranian MuddyWater advanced persistent threat group targeting Turkish private organizations and governmental institutions. "This campaign utilizes malicious PDFs, XLS files and Windows executables to deploy malicious PowerShell-based downloaders acting as initial footholds into the target's enterprise," Cisco Talos researchers Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura said in a newly published report.
An Iranian state-sponsored actor has been observed scanning and attempting to abuse the Log4Shell flaw in publicly-exposed Java applications to deploy a hitherto undocumented PowerShell-based modular backdoor dubbed "CharmPower" for follow-on post-exploitation. Log4Shell aka CVE-2021-44228 concerns a critical security vulnerability in the popular Log4j logging library that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote execution of arbitrary code on compromised systems.
The U.S. Cyber Command on Wednesday officially confirmed MuddyWater's ties to the Iranian intelligence apparatus, while simultaneously detailing the various tools and tactics adopted by the espionage actor to burrow into victim networks. "MuddyWater has been seen using a variety of techniques to maintain access to victim networks," USCYBERCOM's Cyber National Mission Force said in a statement.