Threat actor
Cotton Sandstorm
Last fetched
Cotton Sandstorm is a threat actor tracked in WhisperGraph's MITRE ATT&CK corpus, observed using 0 techniques and also known as 5 other names.
Also known as
Emennet Pasargad, Holy Souls, MARNANBRIDGE, NEPTUNIUM, HAYWIRE KITTEN
Description
Cotton Sandstorm is an Iranian threat actor involved in hack-and-leak operations. They have targeted various organizations, including the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where they obtained and leaked personal information of over 200,000 customers. The group has been linked to the Iranian government and has been sanctioned by the US Treasury
Techniques by tactic
No ATT&CK techniques are recorded for Cotton Sandstorm in WhisperGraph.
Attributed infrastructure
None published. WhisperGraph carries no ATTRIBUTED_TO edge to Cotton Sandstorm today — this states the absence of a published link, not that Cotton Sandstorm has no infrastructure.
References
- https://blog.sekoia.io/iran-cyber-threat-overview/
- https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2023/02/03/dtac-charlie-hebdo-hack-iran-neptunium/
- https://www.ic3.gov/Media/News/2022/220126.pdf
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/security-insider/threat-briefs/iran-response-for-charlie-hebdo-attacks/
- https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/tool-of-first-resort-israel-hamas-war-cyber.pdf
© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.
Related pages
Pivot from Cotton Sandstorm into its techniques, tactics and any attributed infrastructure.
Queries
Resolves the slug to this actor, merging every duplicate node sharing the same name.
MATCH (a:ACTOR)
WHERE a.name =~ $pattern OR any(x IN a.aliases WHERE x =~ $pattern)
RETURN a.id AS id, a.name AS name, a.aliases AS aliases, a.description AS description,
a.references AS references, a.campaigns AS campaigns
LIMIT 25Techniques this actor uses, grouped by the tactic each one serves.
MATCH (a:ACTOR {name: $name})-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN)
OPTIONAL MATCH (t)-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN t.id AS techniqueId, t.name AS techniqueName, tac.id AS tacticId, tac.name AS tacticName
LIMIT 1000Infrastructure publicly attributed to this actor.
MATCH (n)-[:ATTRIBUTED_TO]->(a:ACTOR {name: $name})
RETURN labels(n)[0] AS kind, n.name AS name
LIMIT 25Or query Whisper from your own LLM workflow via the Whisper MCP server.