New Delhi: Microsoft has warned that Iranian hackers are increasingly targeting software services companies in India to access their customers’ networks.
The US technology company said it has seen “relatively little history” of Iranian hackers attacking Indian targets before July 2021, but it has increased since then. “As India and other countries grow as major IT services hubs, more nation state actors follow the supply chain. Public and private sector customers of these providers around the world,” Microsoft said in a blog post. to target those who are consistent with the interests of the nation-state.”
Microsoft said this year it has sent more than 1,600 information to more than 40 IT companies globally in response to the actions of Iranian hackers. This is a sharp increase from the 48 notifications released by the company in 2020. “There has been a focus of several Iranian threat groups over the past six months, especially on the IT sector – about 10-13% of our information was related to Iranian threat activity. In the past six months, up from 2.5% six months ago In comparison,” Microsoft said.
While Iranian hackers also have companies based in Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Microsoft noted that “most of the targeting” is focused on software services companies based in India.
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and the Microsoft Digital Security Unit (DSU) reported that Iranian threat actors began compromising companies based in India in mid-August. The Windows-maker issued 1,788 Nation State Notifications (NSNs) to Iranian actors for its enterprise customers in India, “about 80%” of whom are IT companies. It had issued only 10 such notifications in the last three years.
Microsoft speculates that this sudden targeting of Indian IT firms is being done to gain indirect access to their subsidiaries and customers outside the country. “Such attacks are particularly attractive and valuable to attackers because they provide access to a large number of potential targets. For this reason, supply chain attacks are expected to occur upward in 2022,” said security company Kaspersky. said in a report earlier this week.
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