When Cats Fly: Suspected Iranian Threat Actor UNC1549 Targets Israeli and Middle East Aerospace and Defense Sectors

Today Mandiant is releasing a blog post about suspected Iran-nexus espionage activity targeting the aerospace, aviation and defense industries in Middle East countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and potentially Turkey, India, and Albania. 

Mandiant attributes this activity with moderate confidence to the Iranian actor UNC1549, which overlaps with Tortoiseshell—a threat actor that has been publicly linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Tortoiseshell has previously attempted to compromise supply chains by targeting …

actor aerospace albania attributes aviation blog blog post cats countries defense east emirates espionage india industries iran iranian israel israeli mandiant middle east nexus sectors targeting threat threat actor today turkey uae unc1549 united united arab emirates