APT42
APT42 is an Iranian-sponsored threat group that conducts cyber espionage and surveillance. The group primarily focuses on targets in the Middle East region, but has targeted a variety of industries and countries since at least 2015. APT42 starts cyber operations through spearphishing emails and/or the PINEFLOWER Android malware, then monitors and collects information from the compromised systems and devices. Finally, APT42 exfiltrates data using native features and open-source tools. APT42 activities have been linked to Magic Hound by other commercial vendors. While there are behavior and software overlaps between Magic Hound and APT42, they appear to be distinct entities and are tracked as separate entities by their originating vendor.
- Documented techniques
- 32
- Assessed origin
- Iran
- Assessed motivation
- Espionage, Data theft
- First seen
- 2015
- Basis
- MITRE ATT&CK
How they break in
Techniques MITRE has documented this group using, grouped by the stage of an attack they belong to. This is the actionable half: each one is a behaviour you can look for in your own logs, and a control you can test.
reconnaissance1
resource development5
initial access1
execution4
persistence1
credential access3
discovery4
command and control4
defense impairment1
Malware
Families MITRE records this group deploying. Detection names for these are a reasonable place to start.