The Iranian state-sponsored hacking group known as MuddyWater (aka Mango Sandstorm, Seedworm, and Static Kitten) has been attributed to a ransomware attack in what has been described as a "false flag" operation.
The attack, observed by Rapid7 in early 2026, has been found to leverage social engineering techniques via Microsoft Teams to initiate the infection sequence. Although the incident initially appeared to be consistent with a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group operating under the Chaos brand, evidence points to it being a targeted state-backed attack that masquerades as opportunistic extortion.
"The campaign was characterized by a high-touch social engineering phase conducted via Microsoft Teams, where the attackers utilized interactive screen-sharing to harvest credentials and manipulate multi-factor authentication (MFA)," Rapid7 said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
"Once inside, the group bypassed traditional ransomware workflows, forgoing file encryption in favor of data exfiltration and long-term persistence via remote management tools like DWAgent."
The findings indicate that MuddyWater is attempting to muddy attribution efforts by increasingly relying on off-the-shelf tools available in the cybercrime underground to conduct its attacks. This shift has also been documented by Ctrl-Alt-Intel, Broadcom, Check Point, and JUMPSEC in recent months, highlighting the adversary's use of CastleRAT and Tsundere.