Iranian Hacker Group Waging Widespread Espionage Campaign in Middle East

Unlike other threat actors that have a narrow set of targets, Leafminer has over 800 organizations in its sights, Symantec says.

Leafminer, a threat actor that appears to be operating out of Iran, is conducting a wide-ranging cyber espionage campaign against organizations in the Middle East using a mix of publicly available tools and custom malware.
While the groups technical capabilities are average at best in comparison to other advanced persistent threat (APT) actors, its goals seem far more ambitious, according to Symantec, which has been studying the group.
The security vendors
analysis
of Leafminers activities shows the group has run targeted vulnerability scans against as many as 809 organizations across multiple industries in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kuwait, Israel, and other countries in the Middle East.
The groups major focus areas appear to be organizations in the financial, government, and petrochemical sectors, with half of its targest in those industries. Other targets include shipping and transportation, food services, utilities, and construction. Leafminer mostly has gone after email data, files, and database servers.
[Leafminers] ambitious goal of targeting at least 800 different organizations across the Middle East is what sets them apart, from other threat actors, says Vikram Thakur, technical director at Symantec. Most APT campaigns are typically focused on a far smaller set of entities with shared geopolitical interests.
As a group, Leafminer highlights the need for organizations to better protect their public-facing network infrastructure against known vulnerabilities and attack tools, he says. Thakur estimates that Leafminer has conducted targeted attacks against dozens of organizations from the list of over 800 organizations against which it has run vulnerability scans.
Leafminer is the latest example of the increased cyber activity from Iran in recent years. Earlier this year, security vendor FireEyes Mandiant unit reported a major surge in nation-state sponsored threat activity in the country in 2017. The vendor described
Iran as the next China
based on the extent of state-backed threat activity in the country last year.
Just this week, Palo Alto Networks issued
a report on the OilRig Group
, a previously known threat actor that is also based in Iran. Researchers spotted multiple attacks by OilRig between May and June 2018 directed at a technology services provider and a government organization. The attacks delivered a backdoor designed to help the threat actors steal data from the targeted victims.
Leafminer Living Off the Land
At a high-level, Leafminers tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) are somewhat similar to the so-called living-off-the land approach that many threat actors have begun adopting, Symantec said. In addition to custom tools, the threat actor has shown a proclivity for using tools and techniques that are publicly available or have been used by others.
For instance, one of the tools that Leafminer has been using for collecting credentials is a rebranded version of the well-known Mimikatz post-exploitation tool. The method the attackers have adopted to deploy Mimikatz on compromised systems similarly is a technique known as Process Doppelganging that security vendor enSilo
demonstrated
at Black Hat Europe last year.
Leafminer has also taken advantage of the NSAs Fuzzbunch toolkit that the Shadow Brokers group leaked last year, to develop exploit payload for delivering custom malware targeted at vulnerabilities in Windows SMB server, Symantec said.
Leafminers malware toolkit includes at least two custom malware products — a backdoor called Sorgu for enabling remote access to a compromised system and Imecab, a Trojan for establishing a persistent access account on an infected system.
The hacking team has been mainly using three techniques to gain initial access to a targeted network: watering hole attacks via compromised Web servers; scans for vulnerabilities in network services; and dictionary attacks against network service logins. In keeping with the groups habit of borrowing techniques and tactics used by others, the approach that Leafminer has been using in its watering hole attacks are similar to that employed by the Dragonfly APT group, according to Symantec.
The tactics employed by threat groups like Leafminer highlight the need for organizations to pay attention not just to new and emerging threats but to previously known ones as well.
Enterprises should take note of the fact that a foreign adversary is relying primarily on existing vulnerabilities and publicly available tools to target hundreds of organizations in multiple verticals, with a degree of success, Thakur says.
In many cases, organizations can mitigate most of their exposure to such threats simply by applying known security practices, such as keeping systems updated and properly patched where possible, Thakur says.
Related Content:
Stealing Data By Living Off The Land
Iran the New China as a Pervasive Nation-State Hacking Threat
From Bullets to Clicks: The Evolution of the Cyber Arms Race
7 Key Stats that Size Up the Cybercrime Deluge

Black Hat USA returns to Las Vegas with hands-on technical Trainings, cutting-edge Briefings, Arsenal open-source tool demonstrations, top-tier security solutions and service providers in the Business Hall. Click for information on the
conference
and
to register.

Last News
▸ ArcSight prepares for future at user conference post HP acquisition. ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Samsung Epic 4G: First To Use Media Hub ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Many third-party software fails security tests ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
Iranian Hacker Group Waging Widespread Espionage Campaign in Middle East