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APT33 is an Iranian state-aligned cyber espionage threat actor tracked under aliases including Elfin, Holmium, Peach Sandstorm, Refined Kitten, and G0064. The group has been associated with operations supporting Iranian strategic interests and has been linked in public reporting to targeting organizations in sectors such as government, defense, energy, and related industrial environments, particularly in the Middle East and the United States. APT33 commonly relies on spearphishing for initial access, including malicious email attachments and archive files designed to induce user execution. The group has used PowerShell extensively to download additional payloads, execute scripts, and support follow-on activity after compromise. It has also used VBScript-based delivery mechanisms, HTTP for command and control, Base64 encoding to obfuscate command-and-control traffic, and AES encryption to protect communications. For persistence, APT33 has used scheduled tasks as well as Startup folder and Registry Run key mechanisms. Reporting also associates the group with deployment of commodity and publicly available malware and tools, including DarkComet, NanoCore, and LaZagne, indicating a mix of bespoke tradecraft and opportunistic tooling. Credential access activity includes theft of browser-stored credentials through publicly available utilities. Overall, APT33 is best characterized as an Iranian espionage actor that combines phishing-led intrusion chains, script-based execution, credential theft, modular payload delivery, and conventional Windows persistence techniques.
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.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
48 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
40 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
35 additional families tracked in Mallory.
5 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 5 of them exploited in the wild.
APT33 has used a publicly available exploit for CVE-2017-0213 to escalate privileges on a local system.
In February 2019, the group attempted to exploit a known vulnerability (CVE-2018-20250) in WinRAR in order to compromise an organization in the chemical sector in Saudi Arabia.
This detection identifies instances where Windows Explorer.exe spawns PowerShell or cmd.exe processes, particularly focusing on executions initiated by LNK files. This behavior is associated with the ZDI-CAN-25373 Windows shortcut zero-day vulnerability, where specially crafted LNK files are used to trigger malicious code execution through cmd.exe or powershell.exe. This technique has been actively exploited by multiple APT groups in targeted attacks through both HTTP and SMB delivery methods.
Peach Sandstorm also attempted to exploit vulnerabilities with a public proof-of-concept (POC) in Zoho ManageEngine or Confluence, to access targets’ environments. CVE-2022-47966 is a remote code execution vulnerability affecting a subset of on-premises Zoho ManageEngine products. Microsoft recommends organizations using vulnerable applications patch this vulnerability as multiple groups have been observed exploiting this vulnerability.
The following analytic detects when su runs from a page-cache-corrupted binary... This activity is significant because it indicates a possible privilege escalation attempt, allowing a user to gain root access... CVE CVE-2026-31431 ... References ... copy-fail-CVE-2026-31431
76 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 a threat actor associated with the generic installation exploitation analytic, but no campaign-specific activity is described in this reference.
Mentioned as a threat actor associated with the network sniffing technique (T1040) in the detection annotation.
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.
Mentioned only in unrelated Secureworks profile listing.
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.