Iranian hackers again in limelight for state-backed Cyber espionage
Iran ranks at the top in the domain of cyber warfare among all the other gulf nations. The past several years have witnessed cyber attacks accredited to Iran targeting different companies, organizations, and data of officials. Iran has exercised its progressively refined cyber capabilities to restrain social and political activity, to harm provincial and intercontinental adversaries.
Recently, in the situation where the Russian invasion of Ukraine divulges over into the cyber dominion; Iranian hackers associated with the country’s military intelligence have operated a ‘Global Cyber Espionage’ campaign against the US and the U.K.
It was found out that MuddyWater (an Iranian Hacking group) is behind the cyber attack. The FBI, NSA, and U.K. cyber authorities issued a warning against the notorious cyberespionage group of Iran. The group ‘MuddyWater’ has been active since at least 2015, using diverse names, and has besieged victims from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE as well as Asia. Their hacking efforts include offensive attacks, cyber espionage, influence operations, and even cyber-crime, which were used to achieve their desired goal of becoming a superpower.
In the last two years, a dozen of malicious cyber attacks by Iranian hackers were a strategy to harass, contest, and punish its adversaries around the Globe. In recent weeks India’s government departments have also been facing breaches from hackers in Iran. Numerous government departments, comprising defense, banking, state police departments, education, telecom, and private IT companies were targeted by the ransomware attacks.
Iran and Israel are the most popular rivals in the Middle Eastern arena. The conflict relation of Iran and Israel is the hot topic as most of the attacks on Israel were accredited to Iran. Talking about the recent instance, In December, the Iranian hacking group “Charming Kitten” targeted the Israeli government and business sectors. Last year in October also, Black Shadow (a hacker group of Iran) broke into the servers of Cyberserve (an Israeli hosting company) resulting in numerous popular websites getting taken down temporarily.
In February 2022, Turkey became the target of Iran. The operation against Turkey was exposed by Cisco Talos. The intelligence group discovered that a malevolent campaign has been launched targeting high profiles of Turkey. As per the security researchers MuddyWater (also known as Mercury or Static Kitten), an advanced persistent threat (APT) group with ties to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), has been linked to campaigns against private organizations in Turkey and government personnel.
Iran may not be best at sharpening its other capabilities however it views its leadership in cyberspace. By considering above mentioned instances, we can conclude that Iran becomes the key threat actor as most of the attacks are operated by this Nation. Even in the situation where ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is at its peak, Iran not discontinued but hiked its cyber offensive activities using it as an opportunity.
