The U.S. Treasury Division’s Workplace of Overseas Belongings Management (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 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 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 chargeable for finishing up “cyber operations through which they hacked and posted photographs 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 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 lively since 2020, can be stated to be behind a number of different cyber assaults, together with one focusing on Boston Kids’s Hospital in 2021 and others in Europe and Israel.
“Industrial management units, similar to programmable logic controllers, utilized in water and different crucial infrastructure techniques, are delicate targets,” the Treasury Division famous.
“Though this explicit operation didn’t disrupt any crucial providers, unauthorized entry to crucial infrastructure techniques can allow actions that hurt the general public and trigger devastating humanitarian penalties.”
The event 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 file of focusing on Albania since mid-July 2022, with the risk actor most lately noticed delivering a wiper malware codenamed No-Justice.