Description

The hacking group, allegedly linked to the Iranian government, executed a sophisticated five-year cyber espionage campaign, compromising the US State and Treasury Departments, as well as hundreds of thousands of employee accounts across various entities. According to a US Justice Department indictment unsealed this week, the campaign, which ran from 2016 to 2021, targeted not only government agencies but also defense contractors and private companies. Four Iranian nationals, including an alleged member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Electronic Warfare division, have been indicted for their involvement in the attacks. The hackers posed as a cybersecurity company based in Iran, using spear-phishing techniques to trick email recipients into clicking on malicious links. These links executed custom malware, enabling the hackers to take over email accounts and conduct further attacks. The hacking group used multiple social engineering tactics, including posing as a fake cybersecurity company, and even as women seeking romantic connections on social media, to gain the trust of their victims. Once they gained access to accounts, the hackers used a complex back-end infrastructure and a custom application called "Dandelion" to manage the attack. The application provided detailed information about the compromised accounts, including IP addresses, physical locations, web browsers, and operating systems. Despite the sophisticated nature of the attacks, the extent of data compromise remains unclear, and it's uncertain whether the hackers were able to access and steal classified information. The four indicted individuals remain at large, with the State Department offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to their arrest.