An Iranian hacking group known as Infy (aka Prince of Persia) has advanced its attack tactics to hide its operations. The group also made a new C2 infrastructure while there was a wave of internet shutdown imposed earlier this year. The gang stopped configuring its C2 servers on January 8 when experts started monitoring Infy.
In reaction to previous protests, Iranian authorities implemented a nationwide internet shutdown on this day, which probably indicates that even government-affiliated cyber units did not have the internet.
The new activity was spotted on 26 January 2026 while the gang was setting up its new C2 servers, one day prior to the Iranian government’s internet restrictions. This suggests that the threat actor may be state-sponsored and supported by Iran.
Infy is one of the many state-sponsored hacking gangs working out of Iran infamous for sabotage, spying, and influence campaigns coordinated with Tehran’s strategic goals. However, it also has a reputation for being the oldest and less famous gangs staying under the radar and not getting caught, working secretly since 2004 via “laser-focused” campaigns aimed at people for espionage.
The use of modified versions of Foudre and Tonnerre, the latter of which used a Telegram bot probably for data collection and command issuance, were among the new tradecraft linked to the threat actor that SafeBreach revealed in a report released in December 2025. Tornado is the codename for the most recent version of Tonnerre (version 50).
The report also revealed that threat actors replaced the C2 infrastructure for all variants of Tonnerre and Foudre and also released Tornado variant 51 that employs both Telegram and HTTP for C2.
It generates C2 domain names using two distinct techniques: a new DGA algorithm initially, followed by fixed names utilizing blockchain data de-obfuscation. We believe that this novel method offers more flexibility in C2 domain name registration without requiring an upgrade to the Tornado version.
Experts believe that Infy also abused a 1-day security bug in WinRAR to extract the Tornado payload on an infected host to increase the effectiveness of its attacks. The RAR archives were sent to the Virus Total platform from India and Germany in December 2025. This means the two countries may have been victims.
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