COBALT KATANA has been active since at least March 2018, and it focuses many of its operations on organizations based in or associated with Kuwait. The group has targeted government, logistics, and shipping organizations. The threat actors gain initial access to targets using DNS hijacking, strategic web compromise with SMB forced authentication, and password brute force attacks. COBALT KATANA operates a custom platform referred to as the Sakabota Framework, also referred to as Sakabota Core, with a complimentary set of modular backdoors and accessory tools including Gon, Hisoka, Hisoka Netero, Killua, Diezen, and Eye. The group has implemented DNS tunnelling in its malware and malicious scripts and also operates the HyphenShell web shell to strengthen post-intrusion access. CTU researchers assess with moderate confidence that COBALT KATANA operates on behalf of Iran, and elements of its operations such as overlapping infrastructure, use of DNS hijacking, implementation of DNS-based C2 channels in malware and web shell security mechanisms suggest connections to COBALT GYPSY and COBALT EDGEWATER.
The same group is tracked under different names by different vendors.
| Vendor | Name |
|---|---|
| OSINT | Hive0081 (IBM) |
| OSINT | SectorD01 (NHSC) |
| OSINT | xHunt campaign (Palo Alto) |
| OSINT | Hunter Serpens |
No techniques mapped yet.
No IOCs extracted yet from reports naming this actor.
Every report in the Global Intel Library that names COBALT KATANA, newest first. Open any report to see the full analysis with provenance.
No reports in the Lore library name this actor yet.
Indicators from free threat feeds (abuse.ch ThreatFox, AlienVault OTX) attributed to COBALT KATANA. Each row shows why it was linked and where it came from.
No feed indicators linked to this actor yet. Feeds are checked every hour.
Open-source reports about this actor collected from MISP Galaxy.