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MuddyWater is an Iranian government-sponsored advanced persistent threat associated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The group is widely tracked under numerous aliases including Seedworm, Static Kitten, TEMP.Zagros, TA450, Mango Sandstorm, Mercury, Earth Vetala, Boggy Serpens, Cobalt Ulster, and Yellow Nix. It has conducted long-running cyber espionage and related malicious cyber operations against government and private-sector organizations across the Middle East and other parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. MuddyWater commonly relies on spearphishing, including the use of compromised third-party accounts to send targeted attachments, and has also abused legitimate remote monitoring and management software for intrusion activity. Reported targets include telecommunications, defense, local government, and oil and natural gas organizations, with campaigns notably affecting Turkey and other countries in Asia and the broader Middle East. Operational tradecraft attributed to MuddyWater includes extensive use of PowerShell for execution, use of mshta for payload execution, scheduled tasks for persistence, and compile-after-delivery techniques using the .NET C# compiler to build executables from downloaded source code. The group has also used publicly available malware and dual-use tooling, likely in part to blend into broader malicious activity and complicate attribution. Post-compromise behavior includes process discovery, collection of system and user information, and local network configuration discovery such as victim IP address and domain information. MuddyWater has also been associated with browser credential theft, screenshot capture, file upload or transfer capability, and Base64-encoded command-and-control communications. Overall, the group is best characterized as a mature Iranian espionage actor that combines commodity tooling, living-off-the-land techniques, and adaptable delivery mechanisms to support intelligence collection and sustained access.
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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.
41 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
58 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
53 additional families tracked in Mallory.
34 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 34 of them exploited in the wild.
The government agencies recently observed MuddyWater exploiting the Microsoft Netlogon elevation of privilege vulnerability CVE-2020-1472 and the Microsoft Exchange memory corruption vulnerability CVE-2020-0688.
MuddyWater has been observed conducting a broad reconnaissance campaign across more than 12,000 internet-exposed systems by exploiting known security flaws in internet-exposed ... Langflow ... systems. The list of exploited vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2025-34291 - Langflow remote code execution vulnerability
Clearsky has detected new and advanced attack vector used by MuddyWater to target governmental entities and the telecommunication sector. Notably, the TTP includes decoy documents exploiting CVE-2017-0199 as the first stage of the attack... Attack Vector 2 – CVE-2017-0199 ... MuddyWater has not used this TTP previously.
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2025-54068 — Laravel Livewire v3 RCE
Recently, Microsoft revealed that MuddyWater had been leveraging the ZeroLogon vulnerability as well (CVE-2020-1472)... CVE-2020-1472 - An elevation of privilege vulnerability that exists when an attacker establishes a vulnerable Netlogon secure channel connection to a domain controller, using the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC).
29 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
1,096 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.
Conducting espionage and intellectual property theft campaigns, and also associated with deploying ransomware and destructive malware, primarily via malicious documents that deliver RATs against government, university, and telecommunications targets.
Iranian government-linked cyberespionage actor targeting telecommunications, defense, local government, and oil and natural gas organizations, using spear-phishing, open-source tools, persistence mechanisms, and multiple backdoors/loaders; also observed deploying ransomware and exploiting known vulnerabilities.
Iran-linked state-sponsored espionage actor that used Chaos ransomware branding as cover for credential harvesting, persistence, data exfiltration, account takeover, and extortion-style activity without deploying encryption.
Iranian APT linked in reporting to Chaos ransomware operations, illustrating overlap between state-affiliated activity and criminal ransomware.
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.