US announces arrest of two men charged with spying for Iran
August 21, 2018 2 Comments
Authorities in the United States have announced the arrests of two men who have been charged with spying on American soil on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The men were reportedly arrested on August 9, but information about them was only released on Monday by the US Department of Justice. In a press statement published online, John Demers, US Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said the men were arrested because of concerns that they “acted on behalf of Iran”. They were identified as Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, 38, and Majid Ghorbani, 59. Doostdar is reportedly a dual citizen of the US and Iran, while Ghorbani is an Iranian citizen who lives in the US state of California. The two men are not believed to be diplomats.
According to the US government, the men were observed “conducting surveillance of political opponents and engaging in other activities that could put Americans at risk”. The press statement alleges that Doostdar carried out surveillance of a Jewish center in Chicago, while Ghorbani attended meetings and rallies organized by Iranian opposition groups operating in the US. The press release identifies one such group as the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a militant faction that has roots in radical Islam and Marxism. Between 1970 and 1976, the group assassinated six American officials in Iran and in 1970 tried to kill the United States ambassador to the country. It initially supported the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but later withdrew its support, accusing the government of Ayatollah Khomeini of “fascism”. It continued its operations in exile, mainly from Iraq, where its armed members were trained by the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Arab leftist groups. Until 2009, the European Union and the US officially considered the MEK a terrorist organization. But the group’s sworn hatred against the government in Iran brought it close to Washington after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. By 2006, the US military was openly collaborating with MEK forces in Iraq, and in 2012 the group was dropped from the US Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Today the group enjoys open protection from the EU and the US.
On June 30 of this year, authorities in Belgium arrested a married Belgian couple of Iranian descent, who were found to be carrying explosives and a detonator. On the following day, July 1, German police arrested an Iranian diplomat stationed in Iran’s embassy in Vienna, Austria, while a fourth person was arrested by authorities in France, reportedly in connection with the three other arrests. All four individuals were charged with having planned a foiled plot to bomb the annual conference of the MEK-affiliated National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) that took place on June 30 in Paris, France. It is not known whether the arrests in Europe are in any way connected with the cases of the two men held in the US.
An American cyber security firm has reported the discovery of a previously undetected, “highly active” Iranian cyber espionage group, whose extensive target list consists mainly of large organizations and companies in the Middle East. The cyber security firm Symantec, makers of Norton antivirus software, which uncovered the cyber espionage group’s existence, has dubbed it “Leafminer”. It said the group has been active since the beginning of 2017, but has “significantly ramped up its activities” in 2018 and is currently involved in dozens of ongoing attacks.
Iranian military officials have warned of extracting “revenge from foreign intelligence services”, as Reuters reported that an aggressive campaign against Tehran has been launched by Washington. On Sunday, the Reuters news agency said that senior officials in the administration of US President Donald Trump had launched a concerted offensive “meant to foment unrest” in the Islamic Republic. 
Israel helped foil an alleged Iranian-sponsored bomb attack in Paris, which involved arrests of several Iranian agents and at least one diplomat in France, Belgium and Germany, according to media reports. As intelNews 
Intelligence directors from Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan met on Tuesday to discuss regional cooperation with particular reference to combating the Islamic State in Afghanistan. Information about the high-level meeting was 
Holland has expelled two Iranian diplomats without saying why, leading to speculation that the expulsions may be related to the arrests of members of an alleged Iranian sleeper cell in Belgium, Germany and France last week. On Friday, a spokesperson from Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) 
An Iranian diplomat and members of what authorities described as an “Iranian sleeper cell” were arrested this week in Belgium, Germany and France, as they were allegedly planning to a bomb a high-level meeting in Paris. The arrests came after a complex investigation by several European intelligence agencies and were announced by Belgium’s Minister of the Interior, Jan Jambon.
Israel has charged Gonen Segev, who served as the Jewish state’s Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, with spying for its archenemy, Iran. Segev, 62, was reportedly detained last month during a trip to Equatorial Guinea following a request by Israeli officials. He was then extradited to Israel and arrested as soon as he arrived in Tel Aviv last month, according to a statement by the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. On Monday it emerged that Israeli authorities had imposed a gag order on the case, forbidding Israeli media from reporting any information about it. The order appears to have now been lifted.
A lengthy exposé by a leading American newsmagazine has claimed that Israel and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that officially have no relations, have been secretly collaborating for more than two decades. Their secret cooperation has been extremely tight and has included clandestine weapons sales and intelligence-sharing, according to the exposé, which was published on the website of The New Yorker on Monday and will feature in the magazine’s print edition on June 18. The lengthy piece, which deals with the changing geopolitics of the Middle East, is written by Adam Entous, national security correspondent for The Washington Post, who has previously reported for more than two decades for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.
The government of Sweden has granted citizenship to an academic who is on death row in Iran for allegedly helping Israel kill Iranian nuclear scientists. Sweden’s Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed on Saturday that Ahmadreza Djalali, who lives in Sweden and has lectured at Stockholm’s renowned Karolinska Institute, is now a Swedish citizen. IntelNews has 
The former chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces has said that foreign governments used different species of lizards, including chameleons, to spy on the Iranian nuclear program. The claim was made by Hassan Firuzabadi, a veteran Iranian military official, who from 1989 to 2016 served as the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces —the most senior military post in the Islamic Republic. Since his retirement in 2016, Firuzabadi has served in a number of key consultancy roles and is currently a senior military advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s reform-minded supreme leader.
A cyber espionage group that has alarmed security researchers by its careful targeting of government agencies has links to the Iranian state, according to a new report. The existence of the group calling itself CopyKittens was first confirmed publicly in November of 2015. Since that time, forensic analyses of cyber attacks against various targets have indicated that the group has been active since at least early 2013. During that time, CopyKittens has carefully targeted agencies or officials working for Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, the United States, and Germany, among other countries. It has also targeted specific offices and officials working for the United Nations.
intelNews.org 
Iran spied on ISIS supporters through fake phone wallpaper app, say researchers
September 14, 2018 by Ian Allen 1 Comment
According to the Israeli online security firm Check Point Software Technologies, one way in which Tehran has spied on Persian-speaking ISIS supporters is through fake smartphone applications. In an article published last week, the company said it had uncovered a state-sponsored surveillance operation that it had codenamed “Domestic Kitten”. The Check Point article said that the operation had gone on for more than two years, but had remained undetected “due to the artful deception of its attackers towards their targets”. The surveillance of targeted phones was carried out with the help of an application that featured pro-ISIS-themed wallpapers, which users could download on their devices. Yet another program linked to the same vendor was a fake version of the Firat News Agency mobile phone application. The Firat News Agency is a legitimate Iranian information service featuring news about Iran’s Kurdish minority. But both applications were in fact malware that gave a remote party full access to all text messages sent or received on the compromised phones. They also gave a remote party access to records of phone calls, Internet browser activity and bookmarks, and all files stored on the compromised phones. Additionally, the fake applications gave away the geo-location of compromised devices, and used their built-in cameras and microphones as surveillance devices.
Check Point said that the majority of compromised phones belonged to Persian-speaking members of Iran’s Kurdish and Turkoman minorities. The company stressed that it was not able to confirm the identity of the sponsoring party with absolute accuracy. However, the nature of the fake applications, the infrastructure of the surveillance operation, as well as the identities of those targeted, posed a strong possibility that “Domestic Kitten” was sponsored by the government of Iran, it concluded. Last July, the American cyber security firm Symantec said that it had uncovered a new cyber espionage group called “Leafminer”, which was allegedly sponsored by the Iranian state. The group had reportedly launched attacks on more than 800 agencies and organizations in in countries such as Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 14 September 2018 | Permalink
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