APT42

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

APT42

APT42 is an Iranian state-sponsored group linked to the IRGC Intelligence Organization, focused on espionage against government and defense officials, journalists, academics and activists. It leans heavily on social engineering, building rapport with targets before delivering malware, and in 2026 it adopted AI-assisted phishing and an expanded TAMECAT PowerShell backdoor.

Iran

Government / Defense / Civil society

First seen

2015

Latest IOC

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Names and aliases

Group profile

Attack lifecycle

Malware and tooling

IOCs

Notable campaigns

NAMES AND ALIASES

APT42, CALANQUE and the Charming Kitten orbit

APT42 is tracked under a handful of names and sits close to the broader Charming Kitten cluster. It maps to one entry among the Iranian threat clusters we monitor, and it overlaps in tooling and targeting with APT35.

GROUP PROFILE

Rapport-building espionage against high-value targets

APT42 runs intelligence collection for the Iranian state. Its hallmark is patient social engineering: posing as journalists, event organizers or think-tank staff, building trust across multiple channels, and only then delivering a malicious link or file.

Our record places its origin as Iran and ties it to espionage against government, defense and civil-society targets. A 2026 campaign used AI-assisted research and social engineering to phish senior officials and their contacts.

The group's recent delivery chains abuse the Windows search-ms protocol and WebDAV to stage LNK lures that fetch a batch loader and PowerShell modules, ending in the TAMECAT backdoor.

Facts:

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Victims reported in our records and posts:

ATTACK LIFECYCLE

Social engineering into TAMECAT

The stages below come from APT42 activity in posts we track on our IOC Hunter feed.

Initial Access

Spear-phishing remains the front door. In the 2026 campaign Hunt.io tracked as Operation Neusploit, APT28 sent convincing spear-phishing from already-compromised government accounts and abused a Microsoft Office security bypass (CVE-2026-21509) to kick off a fileless chain. A separate June 2026 cluster delivered the LameHug malware through spear-phishing ZIP archives using double-extension lures.

Initial Access

MALWARE AND TOOLING

TAMECAT, POWERSTAR and BellaCiao

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

Access through social engineering, not CVE exploitation

APT42's intrusions in our records rely on social engineering, credential phishing and malware-laced lures rather than on exploiting specific software vulnerabilities for initial access, so this profile does not list a confirmed exploited-CVE set. Detection should focus on the search-ms and WebDAV delivery chain and the TAMECAT PowerShell loader.

APT42

IOCS FROM HUNT.IO PLATFORM

Latest IOCs

We currently track - IP indicators, - hosts, and - SHA256 hashes for Akira across - intelligence posts, with the most recent indicator dated -. The sample below is limited to indicators from the latest posts. It is not the full set.

Showing a sample of recent indicators

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APT42

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete

APT42

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

AI-assisted phishing and the SpearSpecter campaign

Recent reporting tracks APT42's social engineering and TAMECAT backdoor.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.