The ongoing conflict/crisis in the Middle East involving Iran has moved well beyond a localized conflict to a full-blown war. As with other conflicts and geo-political faultline expansion, this conflict has spilled over. According to threat intelligence analysis done by Shieldworkz's Cyber Threat Intelligence Division, Iranian state-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) groups alongside Russian and Chinese collection units are actively targeting networks across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

If your organization operates in this region, or has vendors and supply chains that do, then this is not a threat to monitor passively. It is one to act on now. As the conflict escalates, so will the cyber consequences.

Before we move forward, don’t forget to check out our previous blog post on “Building an OT Cybersecurity Program with IEC 62443 and NIST SP 800-82” here.

What has the Iran conflict changed: From Reconnaissance to Weaponization

The most critical assessment in the Shieldworkz report is this: the cyber dimension of the Iran–US crisis has transitioned from reconnaissance into active weaponization and exploitation. Threat actors are no longer just watching. They are positioning and waiting for their cue.

Observed activity includes:

• Credential theft via targeted and time-bound phishing, concentrated during early Gulf morning hours (04:00–08:00 AST) — periods when Security Operations Centers are typically understaffed

• Lateral movement using Living off the Land Binaries (LOLBins) — legitimate Windows tools like PowerShell, WMIC, Certutil, and Mshta in order to evade detection

• Pre-positioning of destructive payloads, with a 24–72 hour activation window linked to various phases of the ongoing conflict (including release of drone swarms)   

This is a familiar playbook. The region has seen it before. Shamoon in 2012 and 2016/17, and ZeroCleare in 2019, demonstrated that wiper malware deployments are a credible escalation path during periods of geopolitical tension. History suggests that we need to take this warning seriously.

Which sectors are in the crosshairs

The sectoral risk assessment in the report is stark. Three sectors are rated critical:

• Energy and oil/gas: facing wiper deployment risk, SCADA/ICS targeting, and supply chain compromise

• Government and critical services: at risk of credential theft, espionage, and data exfiltration

• Telecommunications: targeted for infrastructure infiltration, traffic interception, and long-term persistent access

• Aviation: To create chaos and impact GDP negatively by slowing down passenger and cargo movement

Financial services, healthcare, and logistics and ports are rated high risk.

Critically, our analysis notes that multinational corporations with Gulf operations face cross-border exposure. If your vendor ecosystem intersects with GCC/MENA infrastructure at any level, even indirectly then your organization may be a secondary target. Supply chain compromise is specifically flagged as a threat active across the entire 72-hour crisis window.

The threat actors behind the activities

Four groups are have been identified as ‘highly active’ in the region (since March 1st) as per our analysis:

MuddyWater (Iran / MOIS): Rated CRITICAL. Linked to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, this group consistently targets GCC government and energy organizations using spear phishing, PowerShell abuse, credential theft, and tunnelling techniques.

Salt Typhoon (China): Rated HIGH. A China-aligned cluster focused on long-term persistent access to telecommunications infrastructure, ISPs, and government networks.

Russian-Aligned Collection Units (GRU/SVR): Rated HIGH. Operating in parallel to Iranian activity, these units conduct clandestine intelligence collection targeting energy, defense, and government sectors. These groups are deliberately blending their operations into Iranian-linked noise to complicate attribution. This could be a joint war game agreed upon by state actors in both countries.

Prince of Persia (Iran-linked cluster): This group has become very active across regional cyberspace. Its primary targets include critical infrastructure and economically significant businesses.

Early warning signs to watch for

The report identifies eight behavioral indicators that defenders should treat as early-warning signals:

• Surges in authentication failures outside normal business hours, particularly 04:00–08:00 AST

• Privileged account logins from unexpected geographies or unrecognized devices

• Unusual lateral movement patterns via SMB, WMI, or RDP between network segments

• Spikes in administrative tool usage — PowerShell, certutil, mshta, wmic

• Abnormal network traffic peaks aligned with Gulf data cycles

• Exploitation attempts against public-facing assets and web applications

• Indicators related to CVE-2026-22769 (Dell RecoverPoint) — actively being exploited in the region

• Unexpected vendor or third-party account activity, or unexplained privilege escalation

None of these indicators in isolation guarantees a breach. But any cluster of them warrants immediate investigation.

What you should do: Priority actions for cybersecurity teams

The report organizes recommended defensive actions across five domains. Here is what matters most right now:

Access and identity security

• Enforce strong MFA across all services. Prioritize FIDO2/WebAuthn hardware keys and disable SMS-based MFA where operationally feasible

• Enforce least-privilege policies and remove stale, dormant, or orphaned accounts from Active Directory and cloud IAM

• Conduct an emergency privileged access review within 24 hours

• Require MFA for remote administration, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud control planes

Traffic monitoring and network hardening

• Hunt actively for LOLBin activity: encoded PowerShell commands, certutil downloads, mshta execution, and WMIC remote process calls

• Implement application allowlisting on critical servers and assets

• Deepen network segmentation (stringent zoning) and deploy microsegmentation for critical enclaves

• Prioritize patching of supply chain components, especially

Incident response readiness

• Update IR playbooks now to include wiper/destructive scenarios and Iranian APT TTPs

• Validate backup integrity and offline recovery capabilities — do this within 24 hours, not when an incident is already underway

• Run tabletop exercises simulating wiper deployment before you need to respond to a real one

Monitoring and intelligence

• Operate 24/7 threat hunting through the current threat period

• Deploy SOC dashboards focused on authentication anomalies, lateral movement, and supply chain telemetry

• Integrate government threat feeds, civilian OSINT, and commercial threat intelligence platforms

Executive governance

• Brief leadership at minimum every 12 hours during elevated threat periods

• Prepare crisis communications playbooks for both internal and external audiences

• Coordinate legal, compliance, and PR teams ahead of potential escalation scenarios

Preparing to manage the dynamic threat landscape

The Shieldworkz report outlines four scenarios organizations should prepare for simultaneously:

The key operational implication is that these scenarios are not sequential. They can and likely will overlap.

The intelligence picture is clear. Cyber operations linked to the Iran crisis are active, sophisticated, and escalating in real time. The GCC and MENA region is the primary operational theater, but the blast radius extends to any organization connected to it through vendors, cloud infrastructure, or supply chains. In fact, the threat landscape is global while the tactics may be regional.

The Shieldworkz report advises defenders to operate under an assume-breach paradigm. Do not wait for an alert to validate your defenses. Assume that threat actors may already be present in your environment and hunt accordingly.

The time to act is not after a destructive payload activates. It is now.

Connect with us to learn more on the threat environment in the Middle East.  

Download our latest checklist on IEC 62443 and NIST SP 100-82 integration, here