JCPOA Negotiations: How Iranian regime delegation in Vienna are leading world partners down a path of deceit and delay 🤬🤬🤬

JCPOA Vienna Talks (Image credit: Foreign Brief) 

Private talks in Vienna between Iran and Western powers aimed at reviving nuclear deal reached in 2015 have been going on for some time but there have been reports of numerous differences between the two sides. E3 diplomats say Iranian regime delegation unwilling to negotiate genuinely and as Iran's deceptive regime continues to stockpile uranium E3 diplomats warn that the nuclear deal will become a hollow shell in the not-too-distant future.

Iran's response to these allegations is as usual a deceptive and deviant response saying that diplomacy is a two-way street that goes so far as to accuse Western powers of playing the blame game. But the reality is very different as usual. Leaked notes from these talks indicate that the Iranian regime wants all sanctions to be lifted by the United States regardless of whether the sanctions were imposed because of  nuclear deal. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

It is clear that this delegation and by proxy this evil regime of mullahs have no interest in negotiating with the Western powers in this regard. They continue to delay and deceive their partners into thinking that an agreement can be reached while behind scenes they continue to stockpile uranium for nuclear weapons. this is so BAD! Western powers must be ready to withdraw from these negotiations and take further measures to eliminate this regime.

The innocent people of Iran suffer every day because they fail to act 😭😭

Mystery of the UK Parliament cyber-attack unsolved, as spotlight turns on Israel

Since my last post in October, there has been no confirmation of which group was behind the cyber-attack on Westminster, or the role of the Iranian government in sponsoring or tasking the attackers (as noted in my last blog, The Times newspaper reported that the Iranian state was likely behind the attack). Since then, the Israeli General Nadav Padan, in charge of Israel's network security, has spoken out about the growing number of attacks orchestrated by Iranian state-sponsored hackers against Israel. General Padan, who is Head of the IDF C41 Cyber Defese Directorate, told the Reuters Cyber Security Summit that Iran is now responsible for many of the thousands of attacks carried out on Israel each day. The controversial nature of Israeli Foreign Policy continues to stimulate acts of retribution from the Arab states, and Iranian cyber-attacks will, at least to some extent, represent long-standing resentment caused by the Stuxnet attack - rumored to have been carried out jointly by Israel and the US in 2010. This is surely evidence that Iran is continuing to wage war in the cyber domain.

                       General Nadav Padan

Iran has featured heavily in the news of late. John Kerry (former US Secretary), recently rebuffed Donald Trump's claims that Iran is violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOPA), arguing that there is no 'scientific bases' and 'no evidence' for Trump's claims, and that retaining the Iran nuclear deal is key to preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle-East. Whilst there may be no evidence to indicate that Iran is defying the terms of the nuclear deal, the USA remains at the center of the cyber-attacks (see my earlier article: Iranian Hacking Threat to US if Nuclear Deal Collapses). However, last month's attack on the UK Parliament demonstrates that Iranian hostility is not confined to the US and Israel; the governments of other Western states are also being targeted.

In the meantime, the people of Iran continue to suffer 'collateral damage', as they lose out form US government restrictions that prevent Iranians from hosting apps on the Apple and Google app stores. Iranians had previously been able to access and download Apple and Google software (as Communications Technology was exempt from the Iran embargo), and activists are putting pressure on Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to return to the Obama administration policy. 

UK Parliament Hacked By Iran

The United Kingdom (UK) Parliament appears to have been hacked by Iran. The cyber-attack on 23 June 2017 was a brute-force attack against 9000 email accounts including the UK Prime Minister Theresa May and in total between 30 to 90 members of Parliament.

The UK Times newspaper which broke the story, said that it was Iran’s first significant act of cyber-warfare on the UK and underlines its emergence as one of the world’s biggest cyber powers and that Iran is highly capable of such attacks.

The decision to publish the information now is interesting, coming after the US President Donald Trump's intent to withdraw from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) against Iran, which could threaten to re-instate sanctions against Iran. The UK, France and Germany do not agree with the USA on the matter. Without complete agreement, perhaps Iran will not suffer from any new sanctions against it, as it appears that Iran has not violated any of the sanctions.

Iranian regime attack or amateur hackers?

The attack, which was suspected of being originally from Russia, may have been carried out by amateur hackers. At the time of the attack in June, it was said that the attackers could only break into the email accounts of members of Parliament (MPs) which had simple, easy to hack passwords. As a security response at the time, MPs were unable to access their accounts and had to communicate using SMS texts instead. It now seems, however, that the regime may perhaps have after all been behind the attack?

Reasons for the attack

The reasons for the attack are unknown (or at least the British Intelligence services are not saying), but could be:

• Exploratory activities: Iran may have been looking for UK data that Iran could then force the UK to make concessions with, or that could compromise the interests of the UK
• Iran may have been looking for a trade advantage
• More worryingly is the possibility that the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) may be seeking to undermine Iran's anti-nuclear proliferation deal in order to get it scrapped; Iran could then restart its nuclear weapons research.

The IRGC are at odds with President Hassan Rouhani, who they see as being too pro-West and the religious leader of the regime, Ayatollah Khamenei is linked with the IRGC, so there is an ongoing rift between the religious and political leadership of Iran, partly due to Rouhani slashing the IRGC's budget to restrict their economic activities.

An uncertain future

In my previous article, it is possible that Iran may seek to increase cyber-attacks against the USA if the US walked away from the JCPOA. Now that President Trump appears to be doing that, even if Germany, UK and France don't agree, we may see an increase in the cyber war from Iran against the West.

Iranian Hacking Threat to USA if Nuclear Deal Collapses

Since the signing of the nuclear deal between the USA and Iran in 2015 (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)), Iranian cyber attacks against the USA have dropped off. 

The U.S. and six partners began discussions with Iran in 2013 to lift some economic sanctions to limit Iranian nuclear developments, and since then Iranian hackers have largely reduced attacks against the U.S., focusing instead on industrial espionage and hitting rival Middle Eastern countries. However, with the threat by the U.S. President Donald Trump to walk away from the deal, there are fears that Iran will re-start cyber-attacks against the USA.

The cyber-security research company FireEye have produced a report which has identified an Iranian-government group that FireEye have called APT33 (APT means Advanced Persistent Threat, indicating state-involvement). APT33 has previously attacked using spear-phishing techniques to target companies involved in the petrochemical industry and in military and commercial aviation. Could APT33 or similar be ready to attack the U.S. if Trump quits the JCPOA?

A Short History of Iranian Cyber-attacks

• 2010: It was suspected that the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran with the Stuxnet malware, damaging Iranian nuclear control equipment at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
• 2011/2013: In possible response to Stuxnet, Iran used DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Operation Ababil attacks against over 45 major financial institutions. Seven members of the Iranian ITSec Team were subsequently indicted by the FBI for over 176 days of DDoS attacks against the U.S. and also the attack against the Bowman Dam.
• 2012: APT33 attack the Saudi Aramco oil company using the Shamoon malware, destroying thousands of computers in that company.
• 2015: After JCPOA, large-scale Iranian attacks against the U.S. dropped off, although this may also have been due to Iran's concerns with Syria and Yemen. Also, APT33 continued espionage attacks against the U.S., South Korea and Saudi. In 2015, many Iranian hacking forums and use of hacker handles disappeared, probably because Iran realized that they were under greater scrutiny. 
• 2016/2017: APT33 attacked Saudi and U.S. aerospace companies, along with attacks against a South Korean petrochemical company. In May 2017, APT33 attacked a Saudi organization and a South Korean company using malicious spear-phishing emails attempting to target victims with job vacancies for a Saudi petrochemical company.

The FireEye APT33 Report

FireEye state that APT33 used an Iranian developed web-shell developed by the hacker Solevisibile to craft the spear-phishing emails to targets. The webshell (called ALFASHELL, ALFA TEaM Shell v2-Fake Mail), has the default sender email address of solevisible@gmail.com. It is not known if Solevisible is linked with APT33 or not.

APT33 used domain masquerading as the following companies: Boeing, Alsalam Aircraft Company, Northrop Grumman Aviation Arabia, and Vinnell Arabia. APT33 used the domains to target victims with spear-phishing emails.

FireEye identified the hacker xman_1365_x as being the developer of a backdoor used in APT33 malware. It appears that xman_1365_x was also a manager in the Barnamenevis Iranian programming & software engineering forum, and registered accounts in the Iranian Shabgard and Ashiyane forums. The hacker xman_1365_x is also linked with the Nasr Institute, which is similar to Iran’s cyber army and controlled by the Iranian government. The Nasr Institute appears to be linked to the 2011-2013 DDoS attacks on the financial industry (Operation Ababil).

Further indications that Iran is behind APT33

• A malware dropper (known as StoneDrill) used by APT33 has Farsi language artifacts in it.
• APT33’s targeting of organizations involved in aerospace and energy is aligned with with nation-state interests (not those of cyber-criminal groups), implying that APT33 is probably government sponsored.
• Iranian working hours; APT33 worked at the time zone close to 04:30 hours ahead of UTC, which heavily indicates Iran. APT33 largely operated on days that correspond to the Iranian working week (Saturday to Wednesday). Iran is one of few countries that subscribes to a Saturday to Wednesday working week.
• APT33 used popular Iranian hacker tools and DNS servers used by other suspected Iranian hackers. The publicly available backdoors & tools utilized by APT33 (including NANOCORE, NETWIRE, and ALFA Shell) are available on Iranian hacking websites, associated with Iranian hackers, and used by other suspected Iranian threat groups.

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.

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.