Part 2: The Iran-Israel Cyber Standoff - The State's Silent War

This report profiles Iran-aligned threat actors—state-sponsored groups (APT42, MuddyWater, APT34) and the hacktivist collective Handala—detailing their objectives, targets (government, energy, telecoms, academia, NGOs), common TTPs (spear-phishing, credential theft, LOLBins, PowerShell backdoors, DNS tunneling, DDoS, web exploitation), observed impacts (data exfiltration, reputational damage, operational disruption), and recommended mitigations including patch hygiene, PowerShell hardening, DNS anomaly detection, and zero-trust controls.