Introduction
Moses Staff is a suspected Iranian threat group that has primarily targeted Israeli companies since at least September 2021. Moses Staff openly stated their motivation in attacking Israeli companies is to cause damage by leaking stolen sensitive data and encrypting the victim’s networks without a ransom demand. Checkpoint MosesStaff Nov 2021 Security researchers assess Moses Staff is politically motivated, and has targeted government, finance, travel, energy, manufacturing, and utility companies outside of Israel as well, including those in Italy, India, Germany, Chile, Turkey, the UAE, and the US. Cybereason StrifeWater Feb 2022
Activities and Tactics
Country of Origin: 🇮🇷 Iran
First Seen: 2022
Last Activity: 2022
Notable Campaigns
Information pending cataloguing.
Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs)
- T1021.002 SMB/Windows Admin Shares
- T1016 System Network Configuration Discovery
- T1087.001 Local Account
- T1686.003 Windows Host Firewall
- T1082 System Information Discovery
- T1588.002 Tool
- T1505.003 Web Shell
- T1587.001 Malware
- T1553.002 Code Signing
- T1027.013 Encrypted/Encoded File
- T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer
- T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application
ATT&CK technique IDs (denormalized)
- T1016
- T1021.002
- T1027.013
- T1082
- T1087.001
- T1105
- T1190
- T1505.003
- T1553.002
- T1587.001
- T1588.002
- T1686.003
Notable Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
No atomic indicators are listed in this profile. The APTnotes snapshot indexes 1 public reports that may contain IOCs; see Source Attribution for dataset links.
Malware and Tools
- CyberGate:
- Cyber Eye RAT:
- Archelaus Beta:
MITRE ATT&CK Software
- PyDCrypt (S1032) — malware
- PsExec (S0029) — tool
- DCSrv (S1033) — malware
- StrifeWater (S1034) — malware
Attribution and Evidence
Country of Origin: Iran Additional attribution information pending cataloguing.
References
[1] mitre-attack [4] Checkpoint MosesStaff Nov 2021 Checkpoint Research. (2021, November 15). Uncovering MosesStaff techniques: Ideology over Money. Retrieved August 11, 2022. [5] Cybereason StrifeWater Feb 2022 Cybereason Nocturnus. (2022, February 1). StrifeWater RAT: Iranian APT Moses Staff Adds New Trojan to Ransomware Operations. Retrieved August 15, 2022. [6] Microsoft Threat Actor Naming July 2023 Microsoft . (2023, July 12). How Microsoft names threat actors. Retrieved November 17, 2023.