- Category
- State · Attributed to a state or working for one.
- Origin
- Iran(high confidence)
- Agency named
- NSA
- Motivation
- Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2008
- Sources
- 6 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0316 · nazar
IranWhat it is
This actor was identified by Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade from the SIG37 cluster as published in the ShadowBrokers' 'Lost in Translation' leak. Earliest known sighting potentially dates back to as far as 2008 with a confirmed center of activity around 2010-2013. The actor name is derived from a PDB debug string fragment: 'khzer'. Victimology indicates targeting of Iran, assessed with low confidence based on VT file submission locations. Nazar employs a modular toolkit where a main dropper silently registers multiple DLLs as OLE controls in the Windows registry. Functionality includes keylogging, sound and screen grabbing, as well as traffic capture using the MicroOlap Packet Sniffer library.
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- NSA leak
- SIG37
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
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- Back Orifice
- Back Orifice 2000
- Distribute.exe
- EYService
- GpUpdates.exe
- Lost Door
- Microolap Packet Sniffer
- SOUNDBITE
- Windows Remote Desktop
Sources
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de