By: Newsdesk Team
City of London Newsroom
An Iranian hacking group has been hacked itself by a notorious Russian hacking group UK Security Services have revealed.The Iranian group known to sources as "OilRig" has had its own operations counter-hacked by the Russian-based "Turla" group.
The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) a division of GCHQ, the UK spy and listening headquarters uncovered the "counter hack" as long ago as 2017 but only now have revealed the information.
The notorious Cyber actors Turla group acquired Iranian tools and infrastructure to conduct attacks on dozens of countries.The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and US National Security Agency (NSA) have shown that the group targeted victims and adopted techniques used by suspected Iran-based hacking groups.
Victims, the majority of whom were based in the Middle East, saw documents extracted from various sectors, including governments.
Turla used implants derived from the suspected Iran-based hacking groups’ previous campaigns, ‘Neuron’ and ‘Nautilus’. In order to acquire these tools and access the infrastructure, Turla also compromised the suspected Iran-based hacking groups themselves.
The attacks against more than 35 countries would appear to the victims to be Iranian in origin, but the NCSC revealed that this was not the case.
In a statement the NCSC’s Director of Operations, Paul Chichester, said “Identifying those responsible for attacks can be very difficult, but the weight of evidence points towards the Turla group being behind this campaign." “We want to send a clear message that even when cyber actors seek to mask their identity, our capabilities will ultimately identify them."
About the NSCC
The NCSC is the UK’s lead technical authority on cyber security and offers unrivalled real-time threat analysis, defence against national cyber attacks and tailored advice to victims when incidents do happen. Source: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk
