Facebook discovered that a group of Iranian hackers were using its platform to target US military or defense companies. Credible profiles of individuals have been animated to create relationships of trust and push targets to click on undermined links.
After the paralysis last weekend of the system railway Iranian against a background of suspicion of a cyberattack, the country is talking about it again. This time, hackers with ties to Tehran exploited Facebook to target U.S. military personnel and companies in the defense and aerospace industry. The social network has just explained this case in a publication. The pirate collective, identified as Tortoiseshell (“Scale of tortoise “), Has created Facebook profiles credible enough to try to convince its targets to click on trapped links. To make these profiles more plausible, each “character” had accounts in different social networks. The group also set up fake websites Web recruitment and even managed to spoof an American job search tool.
A collective sponsored by Tehran
It is on these sites that the viral loads were filed. Facebook considers that some malwares were developed by Mahak Rayan Afraz, a company linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Tortoiseshell group is known to have targeted companies in the Middle East.
According to Facebook, this operation was very sophisticated, well financed, and its architecture made it possible to hide who was behind it. Social engineering methods employed resemble those of the Chinese hacker group Evil Eye which targeted the Uyghur community. Iran is not at his first attempt in matter sophisticated hacking programs and two countries, the United States and Israel, regularly pay the price. These states also conduct cyber operations against Iran and sometimes, in retaliation.
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