US Issues $15 Million Bounty on Iranian Hacker

The United States is offering up to $10 million for information regarding an Iranian hacker alleged to be involved in a “coordinated, multi-year” cyber campaign that targeted more than 12 US companies, as well as the departments of State and the Treasury.

From about 2016 through April 2021, Alireza Shafie Nasab “worked for Iran-based Mahak Rayan Afraz, a front company operating on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity,” the US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program said in a statement.

Hackers affiliated with the Islamic Republic have repeatedly carried out cyber attacks against the United States and its allies over the past years.

Last week, Microsoft said that the islamic Republic and other US adversaries, including North Korea, Russia and China, are beginning to use its generative artificial intelligence to mount or organize offensive cyber operations.

The technology giant and business partner OpenAI jointly detected and disrupted the malicious cyber actors’ use of their AI technologies — shutting down their accounts.

In a blog post, Microsoft said that the IRGC has used large-language models to assist in social engineering, in troubleshooting software errors, and in studying how intruders might evade detection in a compromised network. 

That includes generating phishing emails, including “one pretending to come from an international development agency and another attempting to lure prominent feminists to an attacker-built website on feminism.”