Facebook says Iranian hackers used site in spying on US military personnel
(Reuters) - Facebook said on Thursday it had taken down about 200 accounts run by a group of hackers in Iran as part of a cyber-spying operation that targeted mostly US military personnel and people working at defense and aerospace companies.
The social media giant said the group, dubbed 'Tortoiseshell' by security experts, used fake online personas to connect with targets, build trust sometimes over the course of several months and drive them onto other sites where they were tricked into clicking malicious links that would infect their devices with spying malware.
"This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while relying on relatively strong operational security measures to hide who's behind it," Facebook's investigations team said in a blog post.
The group, Facebook said, made fictitious profiles across multiple social media platforms to appear more credible, often posing as recruiters or employees of aerospace and defense companies. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn said it had removed a number of accounts and Twitter said it was "actively investigating" the information in Facebook's report.
Alphabet Inc's Google said it had detected and blocked phishing on Gmail and issued warnings to its users. Workplace messaging app Slack Technologies Inc said it had acted to take down the hackers who used the site for social engineering and shut down all Workspaces that violated its rules.
The hackers also used tailored domains to attract its targets, Facebook said, including fake recruiting websites for defense companies, and it set up online infrastructure that spoofed a legitimate job search website for the US Department of Labor.
Facebook said the hackers mostly targeted people in the United States, as well as some in the United Kingdom and Europe, in a campaign running since mid-2020. It declined to name the companies whose employees were targeted but its head of cyber espionage Mike Dvilyanski said it was notifying the "fewer than 200 individuals" who were targeted.
MRA's alleged connection to Iranian state cyber espionage is not new. Last year cybersecurity company Recorded Future said MRA was one of several contractors suspected of serving the IRGC's elite Quds Force.
Iranian government spies - like other espionage services - have long been suspected of farming out their mission to a host of domestic contractors.