Experts: Iranian Hackers get More Agressive

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Iranian hackers have become increasingly aggressive and sophisticated, moving from disrupting and defacing US websites to engaging in cyber espionage, security experts say.

According to Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company FireEye Inc, a group called the Ajax Security Team has become the first Iranian hacking group known to use custom-built malicious software to launch espionage campaigns.

Ajax is behind an ongoing series of attacks on US defence companies and has also targeted Iranians who are trying to circumvent Tehran’s Internet censorship efforts, FireEye said in a report to be published recently.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

Many security experts have said that Iran is behind a series of denial-of-service attacks that have disrupted the online banking operations of major US banks over the past few years.

According to Malay Mail Online in one recent campaign, the Ajax hackers infected computers of US defence companies by sending emails and social media messages to attendees of the IEEE Aerospace Conference and directed them to a fake website called aeroconf2014.org, which was tainted with malicious software, FireEye said.

FireEye declined to name the companies that were targeted and said that it had not been able to determine what data might have been stolen.