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Evidence today of a huge increase in cyberattacks thought to be perpetrated by Iran since the war began in Gaza, have thrown the spotlight on hacking of The Eye by organisations linked to an ally of Iran’s – Russia.
American intelligence services have confirmed that Iran was definitely behind cyberattacks and leaking of documents relating to the campaign of Donald Trump.
There were also Iranian attempts to hack into the emails of Kamala Harris’s team.
After Israel’s invasion of Gaza Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, ordered cyber-operations to be expanded, and the result has been a barrage both more intense and more refined.
Apart from cyberattacks meant to derail the American presidential election in November, the rate against Israel has risen three-fold this year, and the attacks have grown more sophisticated, with less spillover beyond the intended target.
This upsurge is alarming, although none have so far succeeded in disrupting Israel’s critical infrastructure, such as power or water systems, in part thanks to digital sensors placed inside the networks of crucial facilities.
But this kind of warfare is happening too worldwide.
One spook told us: “… passwords illegally retrieved from the ‘dark web’ are being used all the time by sites linked to Russia or China, and, frankly, we are struggling to keep up”.
But all of this only serves to underline what has also happened to The Eye in the past few months from a backer of Iran’s – Russia.
The site always used to get a couple of ‘allow requests’ from e-mail addresses with the .ru (Russia) ending, but recently this has increased massively.
In the past there have been four or five A DAY!
But new techniques emerging now indicate that the problem may become even worse in the future, and private firms are lending a helping hand in combating what is happening.
One of them is Recorded Future (RF) in the USA.
The boss there, Christopher Ahlberg has declared they have knowledge of more C2 (‘Command and Control’ nodes that hackers use to dupe their victimes) than anyone else in the world.
Mr Ahlberg said: “We use that (knowledge) to bust Chinese and Russian intel operations constantly”.
It has also recorded billions of stolen log in details on the dark web, and collects millions of images daily.
They, and others, are fighting a global attempt to disrupt essential services which has only increased with Gaza, and it may become even worse as technology advances.
Unfortunately it looks like we, too, have been caught up in what’s happening…
The memories of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (during which foreign interference was rare at the start) as he was gripped by the incurable disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – new figures and a slew of articles examined by Phil show that young people in Wales may be growing up slower than in previous generations.
