HACKERS LINKED TO IRAN, TARGET STAFF
AT U.S. CORONAVIRUS DRUG MAKER
"GILEAD SCIENCES, INC"
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
Yet despite this, the Iranian mullahs, with help from the international media, will continue to claim the moral high ground. That is nothing new, and neither is Iran’s aggression. As The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran shows, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been on a war footing against the U.S. since 1979.“Iran-linked hackers recently targeted US coronavirus drugmaker, say sources,” by Jack Stubbs and Christopher Bing, Reuters, May 9, 2020:LONDON/WASHINGTON: Hackers linked to Iran have targeted staff at US drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc in recent weeks, according to publicly-available web archives reviewed by Reuters and three cybersecurity researchers, as the company races to deploy a treatment for the Covid-19 virus.In one case, a fake email login page designed to steal passwords was sent in April to a top Gilead executive involved in legal and corporate affairs, according to an archived version on a website used to scan for malicious web addresses. Reuters was not able to determine whether the attack was successful.Ohad Zaidenberg, lead intelligence researcher at Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky, who closely tracks Iranian hacking activity and has investigated the attacks, said the attempt was part of an effort by an Iranian group to compromise email accounts of staff at the company using messages that impersonated journalists.Two other cybersecurity researchers, who were not authorised to speak publicly about their analysis, confirmed that the web domains and hosting servers used in the hacking attempts were linked to Iran.Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied any involvement in the attacks. “The Iranian government does not engage in cyber warfare,” said spokesman Alireza Miryousefi. “Cyber activities Iran engages in are purely defensive and to protect against further attacks on Iranian infrastructure.”…Reuters has reported in recent weeks that hackers with links to Iran and other groups have also attempted to break into the World Health Organisation, and that attackers linked to Vietnam targeted the Chinese government over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.Britain and the United States warned this week that state-backed hackers are attacking pharmaceutical companies and research institutions working on treatments for the new disease.The joint statement did not name any of the attacked organisations, but two people familiar with the matter said one of the targets was Gilead, whose antiviral drug remdesivir is the only treatment so far proven to help patients infected with Covid-19.The hacking infrastructure used in the attempt to compromise the Gilead executive’s email account has previously been used in cyberattacks by a group of suspected Iranian hackers known as “Charming Kitten”, said Priscilla Moriuchi, director of strategic threat development at US cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, who reviewed the web archives identified by Reuters….
