Iranian Hackers Attack State Dept. via Social Media Accounts

Iran launched sophisticated computer espionages leading to a series of cyberattacks against US State Department officials over the past month.

It is possible that cyberespionage is becoming the tool of seeking the type of influence that Iranian hardliners hoped that that country's nuclear program will eventually provide.

According to diplomatic and law enforcement officials who are familiar with the investigation Iranian hackers over the past month identified individual State Department officials who focus on Iran and the Middle East and broke into their email and social media accounts. The State Department became aware of the compromises when Facebook told the victims that the state-sponsored hackers compromised their accounts.

Iran’s cyberskills are not yet equal to those of Russia or China but the attack against the State Department by using the social media accounts of young government employees to gain access to their friends across the administration is a focus that was not seen before.

Iranians have been less destructive than they could be, but they are getting far more aggressive in cyberespionage, which they know is less likely it will prompt a response from the United States.

Iranian hackers have been responsible for a series of powerful attacks against American banks that took their websites offline as well as a destructive attack on Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, that replaced data on employee machines with an image of a burning American flag. American government officials also blame Iran for a similarly destructive attack at RasGas, the Qatari natural gas giant,and for an attack on Sands Casino in Las Vegas, where a large number of computers were destroyed.

Last year Iranians began using cyberattacks for espionage rather than for destruction and disruption. From May 2014 Iranian hackers were targeting Iranian dissidents and later policy makers,senior military personnel and defense contractors in the United States, England and Israel.

The attacks were basic “spear phishing” attempts, in which attackers tried to lure their victims to click on a malicious link, in this case by impersonating members of the news media.
Iranian hackers were successful in more than a quarter of their attempts. The number of such attacks reached its climax in May just ahead of the nuclear talks in Vienna in July and reached more than 1,500 attempts.

In the months before the talks, Iran’s hackers began probing critical infrastructure networks in what appeared reconnaissance for cyberattacks with the objective of causing physical damage but in June and July as American and Iranian negotiators gathered in Vienna to agree a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, attacks against targets in the United States stopped. Instead of this, Iran started targeting victims in Israel as well as members of Daesh in July as the militant group began expanding territory across Iraq.

Then in August just two weeks after the nuclear accord was reached, the trickle of cyberattacks against the group’s usual targets resumed against included 1600 individuals from scholars, scientists, chief executives and ministry officials to education institutes, journalists and human rights activists. If facebook last month had not decided to use a new alert system to notify users when facebook's security team believed state-sponsored hackers had hijacked their accounts, and US State Department officials began to see a troubling new message pop up on their facebook accounts, it is possible that the victims didn't learn of the compromises.

Operation Cleaver: Mass Hacking By Iranian State

Iranian hackers have been identified as the source of coordinated attacks against more than 50 targets in 16 countries, many of them corporate and government entities that manage critical energy, transportation and medical services.

According to Cylance, a security firm based in California in USA, over the course of two years Iranian hackers managed to steal confidential data from a long list of targets and in some cases infiltrated victims computer networks to such an extent that they could take over, manipulate or easily destroy data on those machines.

Cylance called the attacks “Operation Cleaver” because the word cleaver appeared often in the attackers malicious code.

The hackers used a set of tools that can spy and even shut down critical control systems and computer networks, and aimed them at targets in the United States, Canada, Israel, India, Qatar, Kuwait, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, France, England, China and South Korea. 

 

Victims of the attacks include: US Marine Corps, a major airline, a medical university, an energy company that specializes in natural gas production, a car manufacturer, a major military installation and a large military contractor. The Islamic Republic also concentrated attacks on oil and gas industries and universities in the United States, India, Israel and South Korea and managed to steal pictures, passports and specific identifying information for students and faculty. 

 

Cylance said it also collected worrying evidence of attacks on transport networks, including airlines and airports in South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Researchers said they found evidence that hackers gained complete remote access to airport gates and security control systems, “potentially allowing them to spoof gate credentials.”

See here for full report: http://www.cylance.com/assets/Cleaver/Cylance_Operation_Cleaver_Report.pdf

Iran Cyber Attack Feared Soon

Fears are growing that Iran will release cyber warfare on US companies if negotiators fail to reach a nuclear deal by Monday that would require Iran limits its nuclear program.

Cyber-attacks from Tehran dropped after the US, Iran and other countries agreed an interim nuclear deal in 2013, but if discussions in Vienna failed before a November. 24 deadline, observers expect a new series of attacks.

American financial companies, oil and gas companies and water filtration systems could be among the targeted companies. 

 

The US has not yet faced the full force of Iran’s rapidly developing cyber capabilities. Iran initially increased its cyber efforts in 2010 and launched a barrage of simplistic attacks on the US financial sector in 2012. Detecting such relatively harmless attacks was easy.  

Over the last two years, Iran has formed a Supreme Council of Cyberspace that meets once a month and includes President Hassan Rouhani.

Iranian officials also strengthened cybersecurity research partnerships with Russia and Iran has gone from a nascent to a burgeoning cyber power.

Security company FireEye described that one popular Iranian hacking group went from website defacements in 2010 to “malware-based espionage” in just four years.

It is reported that Iranian hackers attacked oil giant Saudi Aramco, the world’s most valuable company, and deleted the contents of 30,000 computers. The same virus also hit Qatar-based liquid petroleum gas firm RasGas.

While the US is bombarded with cyber attacks, it has never been the subject of a large-scale destructive attack. So far Tehran’s hackers are mostly suspected of probing around US infrastructure networks to understand their designs.

But if the nuclear talks fell apart that could change. And this time an Iranian attack could be more advanced.