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APT39 is an Iranian state-sponsored cyberespionage group active since at least 2014, also tracked as Chafer, Remix Kitten, Burgundy Sandstorm, and ITG07. Its targeting emphasizes telecommunications, travel, air transportation, and government organizations, particularly in the Middle East. Documented operations include intrusions against organizations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while its broader targeting includes Israeli and Western organizations. Intelligence gathering is its dominant objective. APT39 uses spearphishing emails with malicious attachments for initial access and combines custom remote-access malware with legitimate administrative utilities and publicly available offensive tools. Its credential-gathering toolkit includes Mimikatz variants and password-recovery utilities. Network reconnaissance includes account and share enumeration, NetBIOS scanning, and scanning for systems vulnerable to EternalBlue. In Kuwait, the group moved laterally using PsExec, remote service installation, and RDP, and created accounts to maintain access. Persistence mechanisms include Windows services and scheduled tasks. Its tooling includes Python-based remote-access trojans, custom proxies, modified Plink components, DNS-based command-and-control, and backdoors that exchange commands and files through Dropbox. Defense-evasion techniques include masquerading, packing, Unicode right-to-left override characters, and communications resembling legitimate DNS or HTTP traffic. APT39 has also used screen-capture utilities to collect screenshots from compromised hosts.
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.
53 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
39 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
34 additional families tracked in Mallory.
9 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 9 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.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This analytic identifies potential exploitation attempts of ProxyShell (CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyNotShell (CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082) vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server.
The following analytic detects attempts to exploit CVE-2022-26134, an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence... This activity is significant as it allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on the Confluence server without authentication, potentially leading to full system compromise.
4 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
77 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.
Iranian-linked group mentioned as a possible—but unconfirmed—threat relevant to the compromise of U.S. military personnel information.
Annotation-only mention; no actor-specific operation or behavior is described.
Listed as an annotation to a renamed-Python-binary detection; no actor-specific campaign or behavior is described.
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.