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CopyKittens is an Iranian cyber-espionage threat actor active since at least 2013. The group has targeted users and organizations of interest to Iran, with reported victim geography including Germany, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. CopyKittens is associated with espionage-focused operations rather than ransomware or financially motivated intrusion activity. The actor is known for heavy use of PowerShell during intrusion operations, including execution and post-exploitation activity. Reported tradecraft includes use of PowerShell Empire, Metasploit, and Cobalt Strike; concealed PowerShell execution through hidden window parameters; and use of proxying infrastructure consistent with command-and-control concealment. CopyKittens has also used rundll32 to load tooling and shellcode on victim systems, reflecting signed-binary proxy execution for defense evasion and payload staging. Observed post-compromise behavior includes lateral movement and process injection-related tradecraft. CopyKittens has been linked to use of a lateral movement tool referred to as Vminst, and reporting also associates the group with process enumeration techniques that can support remote-thread-based DLL injection into target processes. The actor has additionally abused stolen code-signing certificates to sign malware, further supporting stealth and trust abuse during operations. CopyKittens is part of the broader ecosystem of Iranian state-aligned intrusion activity and is best characterized as an espionage actor focused on covert access, post-exploitation, and operational stealth.
Mallory correlates actor tradecraft and target patterns against your stack, your sector, and your geography. See overlap before they land.
Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
35 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
3 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
1 CVE this actor has used in observed campaigns. 1 of them exploited in the wild.
5 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Listed as one of many threat actors associated with the detection's ATT&CK-style annotations for PowerShell and DNS TXT command-and-control behavior; no specific campaign or activity is described in this reference.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection.
Listed as a threat actor associated with the PowerShell P/Invoke process injection API chain detection and related ATT&CK techniques.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection analytic.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.