Within days of the U.S. military strike on Iran, U.S. government websites were defaced in a retaliatory effort.
While defacing websites for political gain is an outdated hacktivism tactic, security professionals should still be aware of additional activities of concern given the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) advisory published on January 4th.
Additionally, DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) has issued several other warnings about the tactics commonly used by Iran, its proxies and sympathizers as well as the potential for Iran-backed hacking groups’ response to the U.S. attack.
Who is at risk?
As stated by The Chertoff Group, retaliation is a question of when, not if – attacks from Iran could have major implications for U.S. private sector organizations and civilians. It’s safe to assume that security and threat intelligence professionals that work in any line of critical infrastructure should be on guard, however, security teams at organizations in other industries may be wondering if they are a target for Iranian-backed threat actors. The truth is that there has been a noticeable increase in the frequency of overall state-sponsored…
