"Iran-Backed Hackers Linked to Espionage Campaign Targeting Journalists and Activists"
According to Human Rights Watch, hackers backed by the Iranian government targeted human rights activists, journalists, diplomats, and politicians working in the Middle East as part of an ongoing social engineering and credential phishing campaign. Human Rights Watch said the espionage campaign was carried out by APT42, an Iran-backed hacking group first identified by cybersecurity firm Mandiant in September. According to Mandiant, APT42, also known as TA453, Phosphorus, and Charming Kitten, helps Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gather intelligence and has launched more than 30 confirmed operations against various non-profit, education, and government targets worldwide since 2015. Human Rights Watch said it first learned about APT42's latest espionage campaign after one of its employees received suspicious WhatsApp messages from someone claiming to work for a Lebanon-based think tank. The advocacy group discovered a link in the message that directed the recipient to a fraudulent login page that captured their email address and multi-factor authentication (MFA) code. Human Rights Watch identified 18 additional victims who had been targeted as part of the same campaign in its analysis, which was conducted in collaboration with Amnesty International's Security Lab. Of the 18 victims, 15 confirmed that they had received the same WhatsApp messages between September 15 and November 25. On November 23, a second Human Rights Watch staff member received the same WhatsApp messages as the other targets from the same number. Following its investigation, Human Rights Watch is urging Google to strengthen its Gmail account security warnings in order to better protect its most vulnerable users, including journalists and human rights defenders, after discovering inadequacies in Google's security measures. This article continues to discuss an espionage campaign attributed to APT42 that has been targeting activists, journalists, diplomats, and politicians working in the Middle East.