- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- Iran(high confidence)
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2017–2026
- Status
- Active
- ATT&CK
- G0117 · 41 techniques
- Sources
- 13 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0013 · fox-kitten
IranWhat it is
Fox Kitten is threat actor with a suspected nexus to the Iranian government that has been active since at least 2017 against entities in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Australia, and North America. Fox Kitten has targeted multiple industrial verticals including oil and gas, technology, government, defense, healthcare, manufacturing, and engineering.
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- CrowdStrike
- Parisite, Fox Kitten, Pioneer Kitten, Pioneer Kitten
- Mandiant
- UNC757
- Microsoft
- Lemon Sandstorm
- MITRE ATT&CK
- G0117
- Other names
- Parisite, Cobalt Foxglove, Pay2key, PioneerKitten, RUBIDIUM, Yellow Dev 15
Attribution
Each attribution is a claim: who makes it, and to whom. Western and Eastern sources are kept apart, as they often disagree.
Western sources
- ETDA / ThaiCERTIran
- MISP Galaxy (CFR tagging)Iran
- MicrosoftIran
- ThreatActor.info (Malpedia et al.)Iran · high
Targets
- Countries
- Australia, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States
- Sectors
- Aviation, Chemical, Defense, Energy, Engineering, Financial, Government, Healthcare, IT, Manufacturing, Media, Oil and gas, Retail, Telecommunications
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- China Chopper
- FRP
- FRPC
- Invoke-SMBClient
- Invoke-SMBEnum
- Invoke-SMBExec
- Invoke-TheHash
- Invoke-WMIExec
- Juicy Potato
- LPManager
- Ngrok
- POWSSHNET
- Pay2Key
- Pay2Key ransomware
- Plink
- Port
- Port.exe
- PsExec
- PuTTY
- SOCKET-Based Backdoor
- SSHMinion
- SSHNET
- STSRCHECK
- Serveo
- SystemBC
- ngrok
Sources
- MITRE ATT&CK attack.mitre.org
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de