MuddyWater
Also tracked as Earth Vetala, MERCURY, Static Kitten, Seedworm, TEMP.Zagros, Mango Sandstorm, TA450, MuddyKrill
MuddyWater is a cyber espionage group assessed to be a subordinate element within Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Since at least 2017, MuddyWater has targeted a range of government and private organizations across sectors, including telecommunications, local government, finance, defense, and oil and natural gas organizations, in the Middle East (specifically the UAE and Saudi Arabia), Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. MuddyWater has reused domains dating back to October 2025, and has a preference for NameCheap and Hosterdaddy Private Limited (AS136557). In late 2025 and early 2026, MuddyWater used commercial satellite internet (i.e., Starlink) for command and control (C2) communication.
- Documented techniques
- 68
- Assessed motivation
- Espionage
- First seen
- 2017
- 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 development4
initial access4
execution13
- T1047 Windows Management Instrumentation
- T1053.005 Scheduled Task
- T1059.001 PowerShell
- T1059.003 Windows Command Shell
- T1059.005 Visual Basic
- T1059.006 Python
- T1059.007 JavaScript
- T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution
- T1204.001 Malicious Link
- T1204.002 Malicious File
- T1204.004 Malicious Copy and Paste
- T1559.001 Component Object Model
- T1559.002 Dynamic Data Exchange
privilege escalation1
credential access6
discovery9
lateral movement2
command and control10
defense impairment1
Malware
Families MITRE records this group deploying. Detection names for these are a reasonable place to start.
Tools
Legitimate or dual-use software the group is documented using. Most of it is software your own administrators use too, which is the point.