Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Homecyber securityIran Hacking Group Used Open Source Multi-platform PupyRAT to Attack Energy Sector...

Iran Hacking Group Used Open Source Multi-platform PupyRAT to Attack Energy Sector Organization

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

PupyRAT is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OSX, Android) is a remote administration and post-exploitation tool.

It was written in python, acts as a backdoor, allows an attacker to create remote command shells, steal password credentials, log keystrokes, steal files, and to record webcams.

The tool is intended for using red-team purposes, but the Iranian hacking groups APT33 (Elfin, Magic Hound, HOLMIUM) and COBALT GYPSY (which overlaps with APT34/OilRig), made heavy use of the tool.

- Advertisement - Google News

Shifted focus on Attack Energy Sector Organization

These groups are known for targeting IT sectors in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, now they have to target the physical control systems in electric utilities, manufacturing, and oil refineries.

Security researchers from Recorded Future observed a European energy sector organization Email server communicating with the PupyRAT command and control (C2) server between late November 2019 until at least January 5, 2020.

They further analyze the metadata which confirms the compromise, “we assess that the high volume and repeated communications from the targeted mail server to a PupyRAT C2 are sufficient to indicate a likely intrusion.”

Researchers are unable to confirm which Iranian hacking group used PupyRAT to attack the mail server of the high-value critical infrastructure organization.

Iranian groups know for targeting a wide range of industries in the U.S. and Europe, this recent attack shows the increasing rate of attacks targeting energy sector industrial control software.

Last year North Korean Hackers Attack Indian Nuclear Power Plant [KKNPP] Using Dtrack Malware and they have managed to compromise domain controller.

The Dtrack malware designed to spy on the victim machines, it extracts sensitive data from victim machines.

Mitigation Suggested

  • Monitor for login attempts
  • Enable multi-factor authentication
  • Use of password manager
  • Analyzing connection log data

You can follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook for daily Cybersecurity and hacking news updates

Gurubaran
Gurubaran
Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

Latest articles

Hackers Exploit Cloudflare Tunnel Infrastructure to Deploy Multiple Remote Access Trojans

The Sekoia TDR (Threat Detection & Research) team has reported on a sophisticated network...

Threat Actors Leverage npm and PyPI with Impersonated Dev Tools for Credential Theft

The Socket Threat Research Team has unearthed a trio of malicious packages, two hosted...

Hackers Exploit Legitimate Microsoft Utility to Deliver Malicious DLL Payload

Hackers are now exploiting a legitimate Microsoft utility, mavinject.exe, to inject malicious DLLs into...

Cybercriminals Exploit Network Edge Devices to Infiltrate SMBs

Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) continue to be prime targets for cybercriminals, with network...

Resilience at Scale

Why Application Security is Non-Negotiable

The resilience of your digital infrastructure directly impacts your ability to scale. And yet, application security remains a critical weak link for most organizations.

Application Security is no longer just a defensive play—it’s the cornerstone of cyber resilience and sustainable growth. In this webinar, Karthik Krishnamoorthy (CTO of Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface), will share how AI-powered application security can help organizations build resilience by

Discussion points


Protecting at internet scale using AI and behavioral-based DDoS & bot mitigation.
Autonomously discovering external assets and remediating vulnerabilities within 72 hours, enabling secure, confident scaling.
Ensuring 100% application availability through platforms architected for failure resilience.
Eliminating silos with real-time correlation between attack surface and active threats for rapid, accurate mitigation

More like this

Hackers Exploit Cloudflare Tunnel Infrastructure to Deploy Multiple Remote Access Trojans

The Sekoia TDR (Threat Detection & Research) team has reported on a sophisticated network...

Threat Actors Leverage npm and PyPI with Impersonated Dev Tools for Credential Theft

The Socket Threat Research Team has unearthed a trio of malicious packages, two hosted...

Hackers Exploit Legitimate Microsoft Utility to Deliver Malicious DLL Payload

Hackers are now exploiting a legitimate Microsoft utility, mavinject.exe, to inject malicious DLLs into...