Iran-linked Cyber Group Aims To Disrupt Saudi-Israeli Ties: Report
Cyber security company Secureworks Counter Threat has reported on efforts by a group affiliated to the Islamic Republic aiming to disrupt relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Cyber security company Secureworks Counter Threat has reported on efforts by a group affiliated to the Islamic Republic aiming to disrupt relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The threat actor known as Cobalt Sapling has been spotted creating a new persona dubbed "Abraham's Ax" to target Saudi Arabia for political leverage.
"There are clear political motivations behind this group with information operations designed to destabilize delicate Israeli-Saudi Arabian relations, particularly as Saudi Arabia continues talks with Israel on normalizing relations," said Secureworks principal researcher Rafe Pilling.
Further, the security researcher noticed that Abraham's Ax mirrors the iconography, videography and leak sites of a separate threat actor known as Moses Staff. Both groups use similar logos and a WordPress blog as the medium for their leak sites.
"Iran has a history of using proxy groups and manufactured personas to target regional and international adversaries," Pilling added.
"Over the last couple of years, an increasing number of criminal and hacktivist group personas have emerged to target perceived enemies of Iran while providing plausible deniability to the Government of Iran regarding association or responsibility for these attacks. This trend is likely to continue."
Considering that experts still consider the normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel farfetched, the Islamic Republic hopes to prevent such an agreement through disruptive activities.
The international human rights group said on Friday that the three protesters were tortured by “floggings, electric shocks, being hung upside down and death threats at gunpoint.”
Amnesty has also learned that Revolutionary Guard agents raped one of them and sexually tortured another by placing ice on his testicles for two days.
Arshia Takdastan, 18, Mehdi Mohammadifard, 19, and Javad Rouhi, 31, each received two death sentences in December 2022 for “war against God” and “corruption on earth”.
The court says the young men have “incited” arson by throwing headscarves into bonfires during protests in Noshahr, in northern Manzandaran province on September 21.
Javad Rouhi has received the third death sentence as he has confessed under duress that he burned a copy of the Quran during protests.
“The fact that Arshia Takdastan, Mehdi Mohammadifard and Javad Rouhi and their anguished relatives live under the shadow of execution while Revolutionary Guard agents and prosecution officials reasonably suspected of responsibility or complicity in their sexual abuse and other forms of torture enjoy absolute impunity highlights the sheer cruelty and inhumanity of Iran’s judicial system,” noted Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director.
“The Iranian authorities must immediately quash the convictions and death sentences of these young men and drop all charges related to their peaceful participation in protests,” she added.
Prosecutors have charged three members of an Eastern European criminal organization with ties to Iran's government with conspiring to assassinate a journalist and activist who is an American citizen, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday.
Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev were charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering for their role in the thwarted Tehran-backed plot, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
"The victim publicized (the) Iranian government's human rights abuses, discriminatory treatment of women, suppression of democratic participation and expression and use of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and execution," Garland said.
Garland did not name the alleged victim, but Mehdiyev was arrested last year in New York for having a rifle outside the Brooklyn home of journalist Masih Alinejad, a longtime critic of Iran's forced hijab laws who has promoted videos of women violating those laws on social media.
Alinejad has also emerged as a prominent representative of the protest movement that has posed the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic in its 44-year history.
The female activist was the target of an earlier plot in 2021, when US law enforcement informed her of an Iranian plot to kidnap her and take her to Venezuela for eventual transfer to Iran, where she should have faced certain execution.
"This is the second time in the past two years that this Office and our partners at the FBI have disrupted plots originating from within Iran to kidnap or kill this victim for the ‘crime’ of exercising the right to free speech, to independent political thought, and to advocating for the rights of the oppressed and disenfranchised inside Iran," US Attorney Damian Williams said.
Iran has assassinated or kidnapped hundreds of opponents abroad in its four-decade history. Germany, France, Turkey and Iraq were among countries where Iranian intelligence conducted many deadly operations against opponents.
Amirov was arrested on Thursday and will have a pretrial hearing in federal court in Manhattan later on Friday. Omarov was arrested in the Czech Republic earlier this month.
