Iran’s illicit cyber espionage is active against Western governments

Hackers working for the Iranian regime have been active in infiltrating and disrupting communications of western governmental agencies. One of such attacks has been against U.S. State Department officials over the past month, American officials and private security groups have declared.

Over the past month, Iranian hackers identified individual State Department officials who focus on Iran and the Middle East, and broke into their email and social media accounts, according to diplomatic and law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation, according to a New York Times report.
The State Department became aware of the compromises only after Facebook told the victims that state-sponsored hackers had compromised their accounts.
“It was very carefully designed and showed the degree to which they understood which of our staff was working on Iran issues now that the nuclear deal is done,” said one senior American official who oversees much of that operation and who requested anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. “It was subtle.”
The attack against the State Department was carried out by using the social media accounts of young government employees to gain access to their friends across the administration.
In the aftermath of the nuclear accord, American intelligence officials have warned senior officials that they expected the Iranian regime to ramp up its use of cyberespionage.
The State Department learned of the compromises after a decision by Facebook last month to use a new alert system to notify users when Facebook’s security team believed state-sponsored hackers had hijacked their accounts.
Just weeks into the new alert system, State Department officials began to see a troubling new message pop up on their Facebook accounts: “We believe your Facebook account and your other online accounts may be the target of attacks by state-sponsored actors,” the message read.