The U.S. Treasury Division’s Workplace of International Property Management (OFAC) introduced sanctions towards six officers related to the Iranian intelligence company for attacking important infrastructure entities within the U.S. and different international locations.
The officers embrace Hamid Reza Lashgarian, Mahdi Lashgarian, Hamid Homayunfal, Milad Mansuri, Mohammad Bagher Shirinkar, and Reza Mohammad Amin Saberian, who’re a part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Digital Command (IRGC-CEC).
Reza Lashgarian can also be the pinnacle of the IRGC-CEC and a commander within the IRGC-Qods Power. He’s alleged to have been concerned in numerous IRGC cyber and intelligence operations.
The Treasury Division stated it is holding these people answerable for finishing up “cyber operations through which they hacked and posted photos on the screens of programmable logic controllers manufactured by Unitronics, an Israeli firm.”
In late November 2023, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company (CISA) revealed that the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in western Pennsylvania was focused by Iranian menace actors by exploiting Unitronics PLCs.
The assault was attributed to an Iranian hacktivist persona dubbed Cyber Av3ngers, which got here to the forefront within the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas battle, staging damaging assaults towards entities in Israel and the U.S.
The group, which has been energetic since 2020, can also be stated to be behind a number of different cyber assaults, together with one concentrating on Boston Youngsters’s Hospital in 2021 and others in Europe and Israel.
“Industrial management gadgets, corresponding to programmable logic controllers, utilized in water and different important infrastructure methods, are delicate targets,” the Treasury Division famous.
“Though this specific operation didn’t disrupt any important providers, unauthorized entry to important infrastructure methods can allow actions that hurt the general public and trigger devastating humanitarian penalties.”
The event comes as one other pro-Iranian “psychological operation group” often known as Homeland Justice stated it attacked Albania’s Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) and claimed to have stolen terabytes of knowledge.
Homeland Justice has a monitor document of concentrating on Albania since mid-July 2022, with the menace actor most just lately noticed delivering a wiper malware codenamed No-Justice.
