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APT33 is an Iranian state-aligned cyber-espionage threat group active since at least 2013 and widely tracked under aliases including Elfin, Holmium, Peach Sandstorm, Refined Kitten, and G0064. The group has been associated with activity aligned with Iranian government and IRGC-linked intrusion clusters, and is known for targeting organizations of strategic interest to Iran, particularly in aviation, energy, government, health care, telecommunications, transportation, and defense-related environments. APT33 has conducted long-term intrusion operations against victims in the United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and other regions. Reported tradecraft includes spearphishing and other phishing-based initial access, password spraying and other brute-force credential attacks, credential theft, deployment of web shells, use of remote access trojans and custom backdoors, and sustained post-compromise access for intelligence collection. Public reporting has also linked the group to use of commodity malware such as NanoCore and DarkComet in some operations. Observed persistence mechanisms include Registry Run keys and Startup-folder execution. The group has also been associated with exploitation for privilege escalation, credentials stored in files, and mature post-exploitation behavior in enterprise networks. Additional techniques attributed to APT33 or closely related Iranian intrusion clusters include PowerShell-based execution, web shell deployment, and use of Azure-hosted infrastructure for command and control in some campaigns attributed to related Iranian operators. APT33 is frequently discussed in connection with destructive Iranian cyber activity, including suspected links to Shamoon, although such attribution has not always been uniformly established across public reporting. Overall, APT33 is best characterized as an Iranian espionage-focused threat actor with the capability to conduct credential operations, persistence, and broad enterprise compromise against strategically significant sectors.
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.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
50 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
31 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
26 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.
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.
In a recent wave of attacks during February 2019, Elfin attempted to exploit a known vulnerability (CVE-2018-20250) in WinRAR... If successfully exploited on an unpatched computer, the vulnerability could permit an attacker to install any file on the computer, which effectively permits code execution on the targeted computer.
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
49 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.
Referenced for comparison as another Iranian group that used Azure-backed C2 infrastructure and Run Key masquerading.
Listed as an annotation/tag associated with privilege escalation techniques in the detection content; no campaign or activity by the group is described in this reference.
Listed as an annotation/tag associated with the privilege escalation detection, not discussed as an active actor in a specific campaign.
Listed in annotations associated with a privilege-escalation detection; no campaign activity or direct use of the vulnerability is described in this reference.
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.