The Hellenic Navy was hacked by Iranian hackers [EXCLUSIVE]

The Greek Navy was hacked by Iranian hackers. IBM security researchers recently discovered videos leaked online , with hackers showing the techniques they use to compromise the accounts and systems of their potential victims.

In the videos , top Iranian hackers analyze the attacks they carried out, resulting in the hacking of accounts of people from various specialties and countries. The accounts hacked by Iranian government hackers include members of the Hellenic Navy.

In general, in the attacks carried out by Iranian hackers, email accounts were the primary targets, with social media also being compromised to a large extent.
The researchers reported that Iranian hackers follow a meticulous and well-thought-out process, with operators having access to every account of a targeted victim, regardless of how important or insignificant their online profile was.

The accounts accessed included, among others, accounts held by the victims – targets for music- video streaming, delivery, credit reporting, banks, video-games and mobile phone companies.

The Iranian hackers went into the settings section of each target account and searched for personal information that may not be included in other online accounts, in an effort to create as complete and representative a profile of each target as possible. IBM did not provide further details about how the hackers obtained the credentials for each victim, so it is unclear whether they infected the targets with malware or purchased their credentials from an underground marketplace.

In some of the leaked videos, Iranian hackers detail techniques they have used to steal data from their targets. This includes extracting all of the target account's contacts, photos, and documents from relevant cloud storage services like Google Drive.

IBM researchers point out that in some cases, operators also accessed Google Takeout to extract information, such as the full contents of Google Accounts, including location history, information from Chrome, and connected Android devices.

The operators then added the victims' email credentials to a Zimbra instance (a popular mail server software) operated by the Iranian group, which would allow the hackers to remotely monitor multiple accounts from a backend panel. Other videos also show the operators working on creating puppet email accounts, which IBM researchers believe the hackers are likely to use for future attacks.

The videos also describe failed attempts to access target accounts, such as those of U.S.. The videos where account compromise attacks failed mainly involved accounts that use two-factor authentication (2FA).

The Iranian hackers who appear to be behind these videos are members of the “ITG18”, also known as Charming Kitten, Phosphorous or APT35. The group has targeted, among others, the US military, US financial regulators and US nuclear scientists. This is due to the fact that these sectors have attracted the interest of Iran due to the increasing military tensions between the two countries, the economic sanctions imposed on Iran, as well as Iran’s nuclear program.

It is not yet clear how many Navy personnel were targeted (there are insufficient reports) and whether the attack was aimed at extracting personal data or sensitive information of operational importance to Iranian government hackers.

The news that members of the Hellenic Navy were among the targets has caused a lot of concern in the Greek Armed Forces. Weawait the reaction/announcement of the Ministry of Defense, regarding what was leaked from foreign websites about the targeting of members of the Greek Armed Forces by Iranian hackers.

Stay tuned.