Iran Steps Up Cyberattacks Against America

An anonymous reader quotes MarketWatch:

Iran has increased its offensive cyberattacks against the U.S. government and critical infrastructure as tensions have grown between the two nations, cybersecurity firms say.

In recent weeks, hackers believed to be working for the Iranian government have targeted U.S. government agencies, as well as sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, sending waves of spear-phishing emails, according to representatives of cybersecurity companies CrowdStrike and FireEye, which regularly track such activity. It was not known if any of the hackers managed to gain access to the targeted networks...

'Both sides are desperate to know what the other side is thinking,' said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye. 'You can absolutely expect the regime to be leveraging every tool they have available to reduce the uncertainty about what's going to happen next, about what the U.S.'s next move will be....'


According to the article, one of the phishing emails 'appeared to come from the Executive Office of the President and seemed to be trying to recruit people for an economic adviser position.

'Another email was more generic and appeared to include details on updating Microsoft Outlook's global address book.'

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