Iranian Military Group Hacks US Espionage Sites

Fars News Agency, a semi-official Iranian news network reported Sunday that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps recently breached the security and hacked into 29 websites, all of which are affiliated with US espionage networks. They stated, “The hacked websites acted against Iran’s national security under the cover of human rights activities.” It did not disclose any details of the attacks. The 29 websites involved were identified in a statement released on a website operated by the Revolutionary Guards.

The Internet has been used by Iranian opposition groups before, specifically by those who contested the results of last year’s elections there in order to organize demonstrations and share information about protests and arrests. The Revolutionary Guards are a military group founded after Iran’s 1979 revolution. The group includes the conventional army, navy, air force, and intelligence units, as well as the Basij paramilitary force and various business units.

hra-iran.org displayed a short statement on its main page: “This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later,” but some of the hacked domain names listed by Fars pointed to this single website. Other domain names led to sites that were also unavailable.

It is not clear if HRAI has ties to US intelligence organisations or whether the Fars report labeled them as such due to their apparent sympathy for opposition protesters. The Fars also declined to tie any of the websites to a specific US government entity.Courtesy of computerworlduk.com