Experts are sounding the alarm about new cyber activity from Iran, as hackers become more emboldened and skilled at carrying out surveillance operations and other attacks outside the country’s borders.
In recent years, Iran-linked hacker groups have showed signs of growing sophistication, expanding their cyber tool kits and stepping up operations against new international targets, including in the Middle East and the United States.
Iran’s growing ambitions, coupled with the geopolitical climate, have given some warning of the future threat.
“They’re good enough that they’re able to break into a lot of organizations,” said Charles Carmakal, vice president at Mandiant, a FireEye subsidiary that provides cyber incident response to government and private organizations across the globe.
“There’s definitely a lot of fear by the intelligence agencies and lots of security companies about what Iran is going to do."
Cybersecurity professionals have detected Iranian hackers breaking into networks of defense contractors, aviation firms, oil and gas companies, technology companies and telecommunications providers.
In February, cybersecurity firm Symantec revealed that the Iran-based hacking group dubbed “Chafer” had expanded spy operations to new targets across numerous sectors in Israel, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and successfully compromised a major telecommunications provider in the Middle East. READ MORE
