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APT42 is an Iranian state-sponsored cyberespionage group active since at least 2015. It conducts intelligence collection and surveillance against individuals and organizations of strategic interest to the Iranian government. Associated names include COBALT ILLUSION, TA453, Charming Kitten, Yellow Garuda, Calanque, and Educated Manticore, although vendor tracking boundaries can differ. Its targets include government officials, diplomats, defense officials, journalists, academics, policy researchers, healthcare organizations, legal services, nongovernmental organizations, human rights defenders, Iranian opposition figures, and diaspora communities. Operations span North America, Europe, Australia, Israel, and the wider Middle East. APT42 specializes in patient, relationship-based social engineering. Operators impersonate journalists, researchers, think tanks, and event organizers, often building rapport over days or weeks before presenting interview invitations, conference materials, malicious documents, or credential-harvesting links. Engagement can move between personal email, corporate accounts, social media, and WhatsApp. The group compromises cloud and email accounts through counterfeit login pages and interception of authentication codes, bypassing some SMS- and authenticator-based multifactor authentication. Post-compromise collection includes email, cloud storage, calendars, and contacts, using legitimate account-export and mailbox-synchronization features as well as custom collection tools. APT42 also deploys malware, including NICECURL, TAMECAT, and NokNok. NICECURL and TAMECAT support command execution, additional payload delivery, collection, and exfiltration. TAMECAT additionally enables browser credential and cookie theft, mailbox collection, and screenshot capture. Delivery methods include malicious attachments and Windows search-ms and WebDAV chains leading to disguised shortcuts. Mobile malware has supported location tracking and collection of calls, messages, images, and videos. The group uses obfuscation, artifact deletion, persistence mechanisms, and legitimate services to reduce visibility. Generative AI assists target reconnaissance, translation, persona development, and tailored phishing without replacing its established trust-building approach.
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.
74 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
27 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
22 additional families tracked in Mallory.
2 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 2 of them exploited in the wild.
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.
Recently Exploited Vulnerabilities by APT 42 CVE-2023-38831
406 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.
Conducted AI-assisted reconnaissance and spear-phishing, using Gemini and OSINT tooling to profile defense experts and target organizations and generate highly contextualized phishing content designed to evade NLP-based filters.
Using TAMECAT to collect browser credentials, cookies, and Windows/WebDAV-related data.
Iranian intelligence-collection threat actor conducting spear-phishing campaigns against individuals associated with the nuclear energy sector, using TAMECAT for surveillance, collection, and resilient command-and-control.
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.