In late June of 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned US companies of increased malicious cyber-activity, or hacking, from Iranian Hackers.
Consequently, DHS has urged US companies to do everything they can to protect against some of the hackers’ most common hacking practices.
These include data-wiping malware, password spraying, spear phishing, and credential stuffing.
What are the common hacking practices?
Data-wiping malware is just like it sounds. It deletes data on compromised systems. The purpose is usually to prevent forensic analysis.
In 2012, Iran utilized this malware scheme to attack major oil companies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The companies temporarily forced to stop oil production. This triggered financial losses.
Password Spraying is an attack that mimics brute force attacks.
For example, the hacker will take a commonly used password (“password”) and see how many accounts they can access with it while coming through in the internet.
Spear phishing is a type of social engineering attack where the hacker will send a detailed specific email to someone in an organization attempting to gather information.
For example, an email that comes from the CEO to the head of HR asking for social security numbers.
Credential stuffing is simply a hacker taking known information like usernames and passwords that have been leaked on third-party sites.
They will use this information to gain access to accounts that are being targeting. This is considered targeting password reuse.
An example of this is people who use same password for multiple accounts such as Banking, email, Amazon, and Facebook.
What does this mean for the United States?
With the United States now working against Iran, it is likely that U.S. companies will now become targets. Iranian hackers have successfully gone after energy companies in the past.
Most importantly, MainNerve is sure all U.S. industries will be easy targets. Please take these warnings very seriously. Not only are we attempting to keep U.S., Chinese, and Russian hackers at bay, now we have gained notoriety for Iranian hackers to be placed in the queue.
In conclusion, if you would like to see how your employees react to spear phishing in a controlled way, you can purchase one of our social engineering tests.
We can provide information on who might need a little extra training.
