CybersecurityIran Revolutionary Guard hackers target State Department’s Iran-policy personnel

Hackers working for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have in recent weeks intensified their hacking campaign against e-mail and social media accounts of Obama administration officials. U.S. officials say they believe the cyberattacks are linked to the arrest in Tehran of an Iranian-American businessman.

The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. officials said the cyberattacks appear to target people working on Iran policy, with many of attacks focusing on personnel in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Other targets included journalists and academics.

The Journal notes that in recent years, hackers working for the Revolutionary Guards — a powerful and largely autonomous branch of the Iranian military — have regularly launched hacking campaigns against U.S. government agencies, but a source told the Journal the hacking sharply increased after the arrest of Siamak Namazi in mid-October.

“We’re aware of certain reports involving Iran,” a senior administration official told Reuters in response to the Journal story. “While I don’t have a comment on the specific reports, we are aware that hackers in Iran and elsewhere often use cyberattacks to gain information or make connections with targets of interest.“

Namazi heads the strategic planning division of Crescent Petroleum, a UAE oil and gas company. He has also worked for think tanks in Washington, D.C. He was born in Iran, but his family left Iran in 1983 when was 12-years old.

U.S. officials told the Journal that some of the more recent cyberattacks appear to be linked to reports of detained dual citizens and others.

The Journal also reports that Revolutionary Guards confiscated his computer after ransacking his family’s home in Tehran.