Posted on 12/02/24
| News Source: Arutz-7
The Shin Bet (ISA) revealed this afternoon (Monday) a phishing campaign by Iran against Israeli citizens, including senior security and political officials.
The goal of the Iranian campaign was to gain access to computer media (email, computer, smartphone) of the Israeli figures it wanted to "attack" in order to obtain personal information about them, such as residential addresses, personal contacts and places where they regularly stay.
The ISA estimates that the collection of information was intended to serve the Iranians' attempts to carry out attacks against individuals in Israel, using Israeli squads they recruited within the Jewish State.
The investigation found that about 200 different cyberattacks were carried out on devices and computers belonging to Israeli individuals.
Iranian agents typically make requests via WhatsApp, Telegram or email, while building a dedicated cover story for each victim, depending on the content they are dealing with, so that the request will not be seen as unusual.
With the identification of the phishing attempts and after a lengthy investigation that led to the understanding of the scope of the campaign and the locating of the citizens who were attacked, the ISA began a broad operation to update the citizens who were attacked, brief them and instruct them to improve their security.
The ISA also explained how the Iranian intelligence method works. This is done through a request that aims to cause them to download an 'app' that will install a malicious tool on the computer/mobile device, or to redirect them to a website that pretends to be a legitimate service, where they are required to enter login details for their private/corporate email account. After the attacked device has performed one of the two actions and the user has entered the email and password where they were directed, the attacker "steals" the login information and thus gains 'access' to the victim's email/computer.
Am ISA source said that "this is another significant threat in the campaign that Iran is waging against Israel, the purpose of which is to carry out an assassination attack. We ask that you be vigilant, since cyberattacks of this type can be avoided before they occur through awareness, caution, suspicion, and preventive and correct behavior online."