Iranian “Lyceum” hacking group target Saudi Arabia, Israel, Africans
A report by two cyber intelligence agencies states that an Iranian hacking group “Lyceum” which targets Israel, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia and others in Africa.
The two companies Accenture, which has a branch in Israeli and Prevalion, which is based in the USA published investigations into the pursuit of cyberattacks between July and October this year.
While cyber intelligence groups Clearsky and Kaspersky released results on Lyceum two month back in August, the new report reveals the details of the latest operations, including new victims, regions and industries under attack.
From last two years, security researchers have highlighted dozens of malicious cyber attacks attributed to Iranian hacking groups. It will not to be wrong to suggest that unlike other nations in the Middle East region who have been found to be associated with foreign players for cyber operations, Iran is self-sufficient for launching both offensive and defensive cyber operations.
For instance, Egypt is known to be associated with Hacking Team and Chinese Privis Technology; Saudi Arabia and UAE are closely working with the controversial NSO Group while their geo-political counterpart Qatar is known to be associated with NSO Group, Gamma International, Global Risk Advisors (GRA), hacking Team and Turkey.
In July 2021, the Cybereason Nocturnus and Incident Response Team responded to Iranian-linked Operation GhostShell, a highly-targeted cyber espionage campaign targeting the Aerospace and Telecommunications industries mainly in the Middle East, with additional victims in the U.S., Russia and Europe.
Operation GhostShell aims to steal sensitive information about critical assets, organizations’ infrastructure and technology. During the investigation, the Nocturnus Team uncovered a previously undocumented and stealthy RAT (Remote Access Trojan) dubbed ShellClient which was employed as a tool for cyber espionage.
In future, if Iran decides to outsource its cyber supremacy to an ally or a country of its interest in the region then it is bound to change the geo-dynamics of Middle East to a great extent.
