G0137: Ferocious Kitten
Ferocious Kitten is a threat group that has primarily targeted Persian-speaking individuals in Iran since at least 2015.[1]
Security context for executives and security teams
G0137: Ferocious Kitten describes [Ferocious Kitten](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0137) is a threat group that has primarily targeted Persian-speaking individuals in Iran since at least 2015.(Citation: Kaspersky Ferocious Kitten Jun 2021)
Executive priority
G0137: Ferocious Kitten is an official MITRE ATT&CK group. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate G0137: Ferocious Kitten by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether G0137: Ferocious Kitten appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Ferocious Kitten
Ferocious Kitten is a threat group that has primarily targeted Persian-speaking individuals in Iran since at least 2015.[1]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1204.002 | Malicious FileSub-technique | Ferocious Kitten has attempted to convince victims to enable malicious content within a spearphishing email by including an odd decoy message.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1036.002 | Right-to-Left OverrideSub-technique | Ferocious Kitten has used right-to-left override to reverse executables’ names to make them appear to have different file extensions, rather than their real ones.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1036.005 | Match Legitimate Resource Name or LocationSub-technique | Ferocious Kitten has named malicious files |
| Enterprise | T1566.001 | Spearphishing AttachmentSub-technique | Ferocious Kitten has conducted spearphishing campaigns containing malicious documents to lure victims to open the attachments.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1588.002 | ToolSub-technique | Ferocious Kitten has obtained open source tools for its operations, including JsonCPP and Psiphon.[1] |
| Enterprise | T1583.001 | DomainsSub-technique | Ferocious Kitten has acquired domains imitating legitimate sites.[1] |
Groups, software, and campaigns
S0652: MarkiRAT
MarkiRAT is a remote access Trojan (RAT) compiled with Visual Studio that has been used by Ferocious Kitten since at least 2015.[1]
S0190: BITSAdmin
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | f6beda6f73b1… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | 7c42238d3e33… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]Kaspersky Ferocious Kitten Jun 2021
GReAT. (2021, June 16). Ferocious Kitten: 6 Years of Covert Surveillance in Iran. Retrieved September 22, 2021.
Open source URL - [2]mitre-attackG0137Open source URL
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