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MuddyWater Phishing Campaign Using Compromised Mailboxes

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3 unique sources, 3 articles

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The MuddyWater threat actor, linked to Iran and also known as Static Kitten, Mercury, and Seedworm, has conducted a global phishing campaign targeting over 100 organizations, including government entities, embassies, diplomatic missions, foreign affairs ministries, consulates, international organizations, and telecommunications firms in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The campaign used compromised email accounts to send phishing emails with malicious Microsoft Word documents containing macros that dropped and launched the Phoenix backdoor, version 4. This backdoor provided remote control over infected systems. The campaign was active starting August 19, 2025, and used a command-and-control (C2) server registered under the domain screenai[.]online. The attackers employed three remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools and a custom browser credential stealer, Chromium_Stealer. The malware and tools were hosted on a temporary Python-based HTTP service linked to NameCheap's servers. The campaign highlights the ongoing use of trusted communication channels by state-backed threat actors to evade defenses and infiltrate high-value targets. The server and server-side command-and-control (C2) component were taken down on August 24, 2025, likely indicating a new stage of the attack.

Timeline

  1. 22.10.2025 18:00 3 articles · 1d ago

    MuddyWater Phishing Campaign Using Compromised Mailboxes

    The campaign started on August 19, 2025. The threat actor is also known as Static Kitten, Mercury, and Seedworm. The emails contained malicious Word documents with macro code that decoded and wrote the FakeUpdate malware loader to disk. The FakeUpdate malware loader decrypts the Phoenix backdoor, which is an embedded, AES-encrypted payload. The Phoenix backdoor establishes persistence by modifying the Windows Registry entry. The Phoenix backdoor version 4 includes an additional COM-based persistence mechanism and several functional differences. The Phoenix backdoor gathers information about the system to profile the victim. The Phoenix backdoor connects to its command-and-control (C2) via WinHTTP and starts to beacon and poll for commands. The supported commands in Phoenix v4 include Sleep, Upload file, Download file, Start shell, and Update sleep interval time. The custom infostealer attempts to exfiltrate the database from Chrome, Opera, Brave, and Edge browsers, extract credentials, and snatch the master key to decrypt them. The C2 infrastructure included the PDQ utility for software deployment and management, and the Action1 RMM tool. The server and server-side command-and-control (C2) component were taken down on August 24, 2025, likely indicating a new stage of the attack.

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