HEXANE

Also known as: Lyceum · Siamesekitten · Spirlin

Overview

HEXANE is a cyber espionage threat group that has targeted oil & gas, telecommunications, aviation, and internet service provider organizations since at least 2017. Targeted companies have been located in the Middle East and Africa, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, and Tunisia. HEXANE's TTPs appear similar to APT33 and OilRig but due to differences in victims and tools it is tracked as a separate entity.

Naming & attribution

HEXANE is tracked under 4 names across the industry. It uses 36 documented ATT&CK techniques — more than 72% of the 174 groups tracked here. Activity attributed since at least 2017.

Who calls this group what — MITRE lists each alias with the report that used it, but not which vendor coined it.
Name	First reported by
Siamesekitten	ClearSky Cyber Security
Spirlin	Accenture

Distinctive techniques

Techniques this group uses that are rare across the other 173 tracked groups — these carry more signal than the near-universal ones.

T1010 Application Window Discovery — used by 3 of 174 groups
T1583.002 DNS Server — used by 3 of 174 groups

Closest groups by technique overlap

Computed from shared ATT&CK techniques. Overlap is not attribution — distinct actors converge on the same tradecraft — but a high share is a useful pivot.

Magic Hound Iran — 23 shared techniques (25% overlap)
OilRig Iran — 20 shared techniques (22% overlap)
MuddyWater Iran — 19 shared techniques (22% overlap)
Sandworm Team Russia — 19 shared techniques (20% overlap)
FIN8 — 12 shared techniques (20% overlap)
Moonstone Sleet North Korea — 11 shared techniques (20% overlap)

Malware families with current indicators

One family attributed to HEXANE, carrying 56 indicators currently tracked from abuse.ch ThreatFox, MalwareBazaar, URLhaus and SSLBL. MITRE documents what a group does; this is what its tooling is doing now.

PoshC2 56 indicators

Browse or copy the indicators by hash, domain, IP or URL, filtered by age from 1 day to 3 years.

Targets

Defense · Education · Energy · Government · High-Tech · Military · Telecommunications

Regions

Israel · Middle East

Capabilities

Custom malware/implant development — ATT&CK: 5 attributed custom malware families

TTPs — 36 techniques across 11 tactics

Reconnaissance

T1589 Gather Victim Identity Information
T1589.002 Email Addresses
T1591.004 Identify Roles

Resource Development

T1583.001 Domains
T1583.002 DNS Server
T1585.001 Social Media Accounts
T1585.002 Email Accounts
T1586.002 Email Accounts
T1588.002 Tool
T1608.001 Upload Malware

Execution

T1053.005 Scheduled Task
T1059.001 PowerShell
T1059.005 Visual Basic
T1204.002 Malicious File

Collection

T1056.001 Keylogging

Command and Control

T1102.002 Bidirectional Communication
T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

Exfiltration

T1567.002 Exfiltration to Cloud Storage

Tools & malware (12)

Milan · Ping · netstat · BITSAdmin · Shark · DnsSystem · DanBot · Empire · ipconfig · Mimikatz · Kevin · PoshC2

Reporting (3)

Who are latest targets of cyber group Lyceum? — Accenture
LYCEUM REBORN: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST — Kayal, A. et al
New Iranian Espionage Campaign By “Siamesekitten” - Lyceum — ClearSky Cyber Security