EU Suspects Iran Will Expand its Cyber Espionage Activities
The European Union warned Monday that Iran will
likely expand its cyber espionage activities as its relations with Western
powers worsen.
“Newly imposed sanctions on Iran are likely to push
the country to intensify state-sponsored cyber threat activities in pursuit of
its geopolitical and strategic objectives at a regional level,” the European
Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) said in a report.
The warning came days after the EU imposed its first
sanctions on Iran since world powers agreed a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, in
a reaction to Iran’s ballistic missile tests and assassination plots on
European soil.
ENISA lists state-sponsored hackers as among the
highest threats to the bloc’s digital security.
It said that China, Russia and Iran are “the three
most capable and active cyber actors tied to economic espionage”.
When Washington imposed sanctions on several
Iranians in March 2018 for hacking on behalf of the Iranian government, Iran’s
foreign ministry denounced the move as “provocative, illegitimate, and without
any justifiable reason”.
In November the United States indicted two Iranians
for launching a major cyber attack using ransomware known as “SamSam” and
sanctioned two others for helping exchange the ransom payments from Bitcoin
digital currency into rials.
Cyber activities are expected to increase in coming
months, particularly if Iran fails to keep the EU committed to the nuclear
deal, ENISA said.
