Madi

First seen
2012-01-01 00:00:00
Origin
IR
Primary motivation
espionage
Sophistication
intermediate
Resource level
organization
Actor type
Espionage
Profile updated
2026-07-07 11:53:43

Targeted industries: energy-and-utilities financial-services government-and-public-sector education-and-nonprofits professional-services

Targeted regions: country_code:ir country_code:il

Context

Kaspersky Lab and Seculert worked together to sinkhole the Madi Command & Control (C&C) servers to monitor the campaign. Kaspersky Lab and Seculert identified more than 800 victims located in Iran, Israel and select countries across the globe connecting to the C&Cs over the past eight months. Statistics from the sinkhole revealed that the victims were primarily business people working on Iranian and Israeli critical infrastructure projects, Israeli financial institutions, Middle Eastern engineering students, and various government agencies communicating in the Middle East. Common applications and websites that were spied on include accounts on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, ICQ, Skype, Google+, and Facebook. Surveillance is also performed over integrated ERP/CRM systems, business contracts, and financial management systems.

Reports & references

  • Kaspersky — 33693 (report)
  • Kaspersky — 33701 (report)
  • cfr.org — Madi (report)
  • kaspersky.com — 2012 Kaspersky Lab And Seculert Announce Madi A Newly Discovered Cyber Espionage Campaign In The Middle East (report)
  • threatpost.com — 76849 (report)
  • web.archive.org — Madi Attacks Series Social Engineering Campaigns (report)

External references