Iran launches cyber offensive after nuclear deal

Iran has ramped up its cyber espionage, targeting State Department officials in the four months since the U.S. concluded a watershed nuclear agreement with Tehran, The New York Times reported.

The cyberattacks have reached an apex over the last month, with Iranian hackers breaking into the emails and social media accounts of State Department officials whose work is related to Iran and the Middle East.

{mosads}The State Department only became aware of the strategy after Facebook told the victims that state-backed hackers had infiltrated their accounts.

“It was very carefully designed and showed the degree to which they understood which of our staff was working on Iran issues now that the nuclear deal is done,” an unnamed senior American official told The Times. “It was subtle.”

The hacking represents a dramatic shift in cyber strategy for Iran, from a focus on destructive cyberattacks to digital espionage.

American officials believe the change is an attempt to counteract the diminished global influence the country may experience by curbing its nuclear program. Iran agreed to limit the program in exchange for the lifting of crippling international sanctions on the country.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has told Congress about Iran’s shifting strategy in several closed-door briefings, explaining that the country’s hackers are not concentrating on major cyberattacks, according to The Times.

In recent years, Iran has displayed an increasingly sophisticated cyber program with a series of high-profile attacks around the globe.

In 2012, Iranian hackers reportedly targeted oil giant Saudi Aramco, the world’s most valuable company, and deleted the contents of 30,000 computers. The same virus later hit Qatar-based liquid petroleum gas firm RasGas.

And in February of last year, Iranian hackers were blamed for taking down the computer system of gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire, wiping all data from hard drives shutting down email.

Adelson was likely targeted because of his hawkish stance on the Middle East. Adelson, who is Jewish, contributes heavily to Republican causes and owns three news outlets in Israel.

Then late last year, a report revealed that Iran had infiltrated the critical infrastructure networks in over a dozen countries, possibly setting up for future cyberattacks on targets such as energy companies, defense contractors and military installations.

But around the culmination of the nuclear talks this summer, those efforts stopped altogether, according to security experts.

When the country’s cyber activity resumed following the deal, the efforts were centered more on espionage.

Espionage typically does not trigger the same sort of retaliation that a destructive cyberattack on a company or government agency might.

For example, the White House slapped North Korea with sanctions over a destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment but declined to respond to the suspected Chinese hack of the Office of Personnel Management, in part because the OPM was deemed a legitimate espionage target.