Iran International
The United States Wednesday slapped new sanctions on individuals and entities linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards for Tehran's "malicious" cyber activities.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned ten individuals and two companies, Najee Technology and Afkar System, over their roles in conducting malicious cyber acts including ransomware activity, the Treasury said in a press release.The Treasury Department had also sanctioned Iran’s intelligence ministry for “cyber operations” against the US and its allies on Friday.
“We will continue to take coordination action with our global partners to combat and deter ransomware threats, including those associated with the IRGC,” said Brian E. Nelson, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The United States and its European allies have intensified warnings over the activitiesof hackers and cyber-espionage threat actors believed to be sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran following reported Iranian cyber operations against Albania, a NATO member.
The Western warnings and US sanctions come as 18-month-long negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran have hit a snag, with Tehran hardening its position.
Tirana cut diplomatic ties with Tehran due to a cyberattack in July that temporarily disrupted government websites and services.
The US Treasury Department on September 9 sanctioned Iran’s intelligence ministry for “cyber operations” against the US and its allies, a day after White House and NATO allies condemned the July attack which happened around the time of a conference of the exiled Iranian Albania-based opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK).
In early August, cybersecurity firm Mandiant expressed “moderate confidence” the attackers were acting in support of Tehran’s efforts to disrupt the MEK conference, which had to be cancelled as well due to a terror threat.
Microsoft also announced Monday that it has been tracking hacking activities by an Iran-linked group, known as DEV-0343, that targeted US and Israeli defense and other key companies. ““DEV-0343 continues to evolve their techniques to refine its attacks,” the report said.
Iran’s foreign ministry Thursday rejected accusations about the alleged cyberattack. Relations between Tehran and Tirana have been tense since 2014, when Albania accepted some 3,000 members of the MEK.
Albania’s interior ministry on Saturday accused Tehran of another attack on its government computer systems on Friday that forced Tirana to temporarily take its Total Information Management System (TIMS) offline. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Twitter the cyberattack was carried out by the “same aggressors” behind the July hack.
Hackers and cyber spies allegedly working for Iran have also been accused of targeting those specializing in Middle Eastern affairs or nuclear security including academics, policymakers, diplomats, journalists, as well as human rights activists who focus on Iran.
These threat actors have improved and polished their technics over the years. According to a Wednesday report by Security firm Proofpoint in mid-2022, the Iran-aligned threat actor known as TA453 deployed a new social engineering impersonation technique informally called ‘Multi-Persona Impersonation’ (MPI) by Proofpoint.
MPIis based on the psychology principle of social proof and involves using at least two personas on a single email thread to convince phishing targets of the legitimacy of the threat actor’s emails.
According to Proofpoint researchers, in a standard TA453 campaign, the threat actor masquerades as an individual such as a journalist working to collaborate with the intended target. TA453 has targeted academics, policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and human rights workers, they said.
According to the prosecutors, the suspects targeted hundreds of victims in the US and other countries, encrypting and stealing data from victims’ networks and threatening to release it unless exorbitant ransom payments were made. In some cases, the victims made those payments.
A senior Justice Department official said that the hackers are not believed to have been working on behalf of the Iranian government but instead for their own financial gain, and some of the victims were even in Iran.
The case was filed in federal court in New Jersey, where a municipality in Union County was hacked last year. One of the victims was a domestic violence shelter in Pennsylvania, which – according to the indictment -- was extorted out of $13,000 to recover its hacked data.
In the latest actions as part of the US government’s response to the malicious cyber activities by Iranian actors, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also sanctioned ten individuals and two entities Wednesday for their roles in malicious cyber acts, including ransomware activity.
The OFAC said all the individuals and entities designated Wednesday are affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).
Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said, “We will continue to take coordination action with our global partners to combat and deter ransomware threats, including those associated with the IRGC.”
Reza Shahrestani told Etemad Online Wednesday that in the first four months of the Iranian calendar year (started March 21), Iran’s steel exports dropped by 900,000 tons in comparison with the same four months in the previous year. During March 2021-March 2022 Iran exported a total of 4.2 million tons of various types of steel. The drop has reduced export revenues by $700 million, he said.
“We will lose our markets if this trend continues in the coming months,” he warmed while predicting a total loss of $2.5 billion in export revenues for the whole year if the trend continues.
Shahrestani blamed the government for imposing heavy export duties after steel prices rose in international markets due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “They didn't heed our advice no matter how strongly we objected to their decision arguing that Russia was dumping its steel products in international markets by offering huge discount.”
Shahrestani told Shargh newspaper in Tehran in May that Iran’s biggest customers --China, Afghanistan, Thailand and South Korea -- had shifted their orders to Russia as it was offering discounts of 15-20 percent on its steel and the impact on Iran’s traditional markets was already noticeable.
According to a report by the World Steel Association in June, Iran's crude steel production had dropped 17.6% year-on-year in May to 2.3 million tons following a plunge of 20.7 percent to 2.2 million tons in April.
The decline in Iran’s crude steel production in April and May impacted its overall number for 2022. While its production level was normal until end of March, the reduction in that month turned its balance sheet negative for 2022. It produced 11.4 million tons of raw steel in January-May 2022, about 10.8% less than the same period in 2021. Iran is the tenth largest producer of crude steel in the world
Shahrestani also pointed out that few international companies trade with Iran's steelmakers due to US sanctions and the need to circumvent them. “Many European, Japanese, and Korean companies will not trade with us. [On the other hand,] Russia stole our markets with huge discounts when it was sanctioned, and we lost our opportunities.”
He refused to disclose the names of the countries that import steel from Iran despite the sanctions. “Due to the sanctions such statistics better not be published. But many neighbouring countries and countries in the Far East trade with us,” he added.
Shahrestani told Etemad Online that revival of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) with world powers, can have a positive impact on reviving steel exports.
Domestic demand for steel is currently sluggish because the market is waiting for a nuclear agreement and there is uncertainty about foreign exchange rates, he said. Without a deal the exchange rate the US dollar can jump by as much as 50 percent which can harm the steel industry.
Amid United States' sanctions on Iran's oil exports, steel is one of the main exports earning foreign currency for the government, which faces a serious financial crunch.
Iran has tried to compensate for loss of oil revenue by boosting non-crude exports of petrochemicals and steel in the four years since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 deal and imposed oil export sanctions.