The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) introduced sanctions in opposition to six officers related to the Iranian intelligence company for attacking crucial infrastructure entities within the U.S. and different nations.
The officers embody 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-Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC).
Reza Lashgarian can be the top of the IRGC-CEC and a commander within the IRGC-Qods Force. He is alleged to have been concerned in varied IRGC cyber and intelligence operations.
The Treasury Department stated it is holding these people accountable for finishing up “cyber operations wherein they hacked and posted pictures on the screens of programmable logic controllers manufactured by Unitronics, an Israeli firm.”
In late November 2023, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed that the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in western Pennsylvania was focused by Iranian risk 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 harmful assaults in opposition to entities in Israel and the U.S.
The group, which has been energetic since 2020, can be stated to be behind a number of different cyber assaults, together with one concentrating on Boston Children’s Hospital in 2021 and others in Europe and Israel.
“Industrial management gadgets, resembling programmable logic controllers, utilized in water and different crucial infrastructure programs, are delicate targets,” the Treasury Department famous.
“Although this specific operation didn’t disrupt any crucial companies, unauthorized entry to crucial infrastructure programs can allow actions that hurt the general public and trigger devastating humanitarian penalties.”
The growth comes as one other pro-Iranian “psychological operation group” generally 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 observe report of concentrating on Albania since mid-July 2022, with the risk actor most just lately noticed delivering a wiper malware codenamed No-Justice.