APT Profile – MUDDYWATER

Category	Details
Threat Actors	MuddyWater (also known as MERCURY, Seedworm, Static Kitten, TEMP.Zagros, Earth Vetala), Iranian government-affiliated APT group.
Campaign Overview	Espionage-driven cyberattacks targeting victims in the Middle East, primarily using “Living off the Land” techniques with in-memory attack vectors to avoid detection.
Target Regions (Victims)	Middle East (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq), Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan, India, Albania, Russia, USA, and others.
Methodology	Use of PowerShell-based attacks, in-memory exploits, phishing, remote management tools (Atera Agent, Screen Connect), and custom malware like BugSleep for remote command execution and file transfers.
Product Targeted	Office Suites, Operating Systems, Web Applications
Malware Reference	BugSleep (backdoor), Thanos ransomware, POWERSTATS
Tools Used	Secure Sockets Funneling, Remadmin, Chisel, Quarks pwDump, PowGoop, Mimikatz, POWERSTATS, Thanos ransomware
Vulnerabilities Exploited	CVE-2017-0199, CVE-2020-1472, CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2017-0144, CVE-2017-17215, CVE-2014-8361
TTPs	Reconnaissance, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Initial Access, Lateral Movement, Execution, Defense Evasion, Credential Access, Exfiltration
Attribution	Attributed to MuddyWater, an APT group affiliated with the Iranian Government.
Recommendations	Strengthen cybersecurity defenses, improve detection of remote management tools, and ensure rapid updates to defenses against in-memory and fileless attacks.
Source	CYFIRMA

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Disclaimer: The above summary has been generated by an AI language model.