US Justice Department Accuses Iranian Nationals of Launching Spear Phishing Attacks

The US Department of Justice has indicted four Iranian nationals for allegedly launching spear phishing attacks against the US government and defense contractors.

In one instance, the hackers compromised over 200,000 employee accounts at a victim organization.

“In conducting their hacking campaigns, the group used spearphishing — tricking an email recipient into clicking on a malicious link — to infect victim computers with malware,” the Justice Department said.

“During their campaigns against one victim, the group compromised more than 200,000 employee accounts. In another campaign, the conspirators targeted 2,000 employee accounts. In order to manage their spear phishing operations, the group created and used a particular computer application that enabled the conspirators to organize and deploy their spear phishing attacks.”

The DOJ says the individuals used their access to one victim organization to launch convincing spear phishing attacks against other defense contractors.

“In the course of these spear phishing attacks, the conspirators compromised an administrator email account belonging to a defense contractor (Defense Contractor-1),” the DOJ said. “Access to this administrator account empowered the conspirators to create unauthorized Defense Contractor-1 accounts, which the conspirators then used to send spearphishing campaigns to employees of a different defense contractor and a consulting firm.”

The individuals also allegedly used catfishing tactics to trick their targets into installing malware.

“In addition to spear phishing, the conspirators utilized social engineering, which involved impersonating others, generally women, to obtain the confidence of victims,” the Justice Department said. “These social engineering contacts were another means the conspiracy used to deploy malware onto victim computers and compromise those devices and accounts.”

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The US Justice Department has the story.