The "Big Four": Spotlight on Iran

We’re back with the second episode of our “Big Four” series focused on
North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia. We honed in on Iran for this
one, and to help explore their cyber capabilities, we invited Sarah
Hawley, Principal Analyst for Mandiant Threat Intelligence, and Lee
Foster, Senior Manager of Information Operations Analysis.

Sarah kicked off the episode by providing an overview of Iran’s past
offensive cyber activity and how these capabilities have developed
over the years. Lee shared how they have also grown their usage and
willingness to use information operations (IO) and how his team
approaches attribution and analysis of this disinformation activity.

We then touched on drivers of Iranian cyber threat and their apparent
increasing willingness to target democratic processes. Sarah also
discussed Iran’s destructive activity going after industrial targets
in the oil and gas sectors through password spraying and spear
phishing operations.

As always, we closed out the episode with thoughts about what Sarah
and Lee think we might see from Iran’s cyber operations in the coming
years. Listen to hear their predictions and stay tuned for our
upcoming episodes on China and Russia.

Listen to the podcast now, check out the “Big Four” episode on North
Korea if you haven’t already, and then head over to our Eye on
Security page for even more episodes.