The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on Monday claimed that Russian hackers allegedly used Iranian cyberespionage infrastructure to successfully collect intelligence from various government, military and other strategically important organizations throughout over 35 countries
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2019) The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on Monday claimed that Russian hackers allegedly used Iranian cyberespionage infrastructure to successfully collect intelligence from various government, military and other strategically important organizations throughout over 35 countries.
According to the NCSC report compiled jointly with the US National Security Agency, the Turla group, which is said to be be associated with Russian actors, used the Neuron and Nautilus malicious tools and the Snake toolkit to gain and compromise network access for the purpose of gathering intelligence through Iran's APT � the state-sponsored advanced persistent threat computer network.
The Turla group allegedly targeted microsoft Windows platforms through primarily mail and web servers to gain access to the network and collected intelligence from government, military, technology, energy and commercial organizations, located primarily in the middle East, the report said.
Due to the nature of Turla's targeting tools, victims of the attack traced it back to the Iranian network.
"Turla acquired access to Iranian tools and the ability to identify and exploit them to further their own aims," NCSC Director of Operations Paul Chichester said, adding that the center wanted cyber attackers to know that even if they mask their attacks, the NCSC had ways to identify them.
However, the report did not provide any hard evidence of its claims that Russian hackers had used Iranian networks to stage attacks.
Russia has been accused by Western states of hacking government structures on multiple occasions, allegations which Moscow vehemently denies.
