Iran behind ‘unprecedented’ cyber attacks on Middle Eastern governments, says US security firm

FireEye Intelligence report suggests Iranian involvement in data harvesting

UK hacker Daniel Kaye was paid to sabotage a telecoms company in Liberia. EPA

Iranian hackers are suspected of orchestrating an “unprecedented scale” of cyber attacks targeting Middle Eastern governments in the last two years, a study has found.

Californian-based FireEye Intelligence said a wave of DNS hijacking had affected dozens of government servers, telecommunications and internet companies across the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and North America.

The practice involves the use of malicious software to access sensitive information and data. Hacked aim to harvest and store usernames and passwords.

FireEye said it had “moderate confidence” of Iranian involvement in espionage following two years of studying malicious cyber attacks between January 2017 and January 2019.

The firm said it could not be certain as to whether hackers were state-funded or private individuals.

“We haven’t identified specific groups”, said Muks Hirani, co-author of the study and Technical Director at FireEye.

_______________

Read more:

UAE consumers willing to share data with retailers despite cybercrime threats 

Student arrested over Germany’s biggest data hack

Will cryptocurrencies ever be fully secure?

_______________

The security firm added that confidential data accessed by Iranian hackers could help Iran on the political stage in future, in light of sanctions by the US and the European Union.

“In terms of geopolitical relationships, activities and data harvested would be of great interest to Iran, such as the repositioning of sanctions and gaining a foothold in the future”, said Alister Shepherd, Middle East and Africa Director at FireEye.