Iran Used AI and Fake Companies to Target Israel and 2024 Olympics

On Novem­ber 1, 2024, The Hack­er News report­ed that Iran­ian cyber oper­a­tives tar­get­ed the 2024 Olympics and Israeli inter­ests using sophis­ti­cat­ed AI tools and shell com­pa­nies, accord­ing to U.S. and Israeli intel­li­gence. The arti­cle begins:

U.S. and Israeli cyber­se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have pub­lished a new advi­so­ry attribut­ing an Iran­ian cyber group to tar­get­ing the 2024 Sum­mer Olympics and com­pro­mis­ing a French com­mer­cial dynam­ic dis­play provider to show mes­sages denounc­ing Israel’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sport­ing event. The activ­i­ty has been pinned on an enti­ty that’s known as Emen­net Pasar­gad. which the agen­cies said has been oper­at­ing under the cov­er name Aria Sepehr Ayan­dehsazan (ASA) since mid-2024. It’s tracked by the broad­er cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­mu­ni­ty as Cot­ton Sand­storm, Hay­wire Kit­ten, and Mar­nan­bridge. “The group exhib­it­ed new trade­craft in its efforts to con­duct cyber-enabled infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions into mid-2024 using a myr­i­ad of cov­er per­sonas, includ­ing mul­ti­ple cyber oper­a­tions that occurred dur­ing and tar­get­ing the 2024 Sum­mer Olympics – includ­ing the com­pro­mise of a French com­mer­cial dynam­ic dis­play provider,” accord­ing to the advi­so­ry. ASA, the U.S. Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI), Depart­ment of Trea­sury, and Israel Nation­al Cyber Direc­torate said, also stole con­tent from IP cam­eras and used arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) soft­ware such as Rem­i­ni AI Pho­to Enhancer, Voice­mod, and Murf AI for voice mod­u­la­tion, and Appy Pie for image gen­er­a­tion for spread­ing propaganda.

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Key Points:

1. Iran­ian group used AI tools like Rem­i­ni and Murf AI to gen­er­ate fake con­tent, while cre­at­ing fake host­ing com­pa­nies to hide operations.
2. Hack­ers tar­get­ed Olympics dis­plays, Israeli hostage fam­i­lies, and gath­ered intel­li­gence on Israeli mil­i­tary per­son­nel through pub­lic databases.
3. Group oper­at­ed under mul­ti­ple alias­es and used fic­ti­tious host­ing providers to man­age infra­struc­ture and host Hamas-affil­i­at­ed websites.
4. U.S. offers $10 mil­lion reward for infor­ma­tion about Iran­ian hack­ers tar­get­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture through “Shahid Hem­mat” group.