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A three-year espionage campaign, believed to have originated in Iran, has used an elaborate scheme involving a fabricated news agency, fake social media accounts and bogus journalist identities to trick victims in the United States, Israel and elsewhere. iSight Partners has released a report showing that it believes the attackers have built an elaborate universe of fake personas bolstered by secondary accounts all for the purpose of garnering the trust of their targets by using fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+.
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Iran Spies Pose as Reporters to Target Lawmakers
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Don't get to bragging.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Thursday May 29 2014, @02:23PM
So the idea is the spy creates a fake persona, bumps into the target at a fundraiser or press conference or whatever, chats him up, and exchanges business cards. Then he gets the target to friend his fake persona, and uses the target's status updates as an intelligence source. Spy then sends spearphishing links to the target. Target clicks on the links because they come from a "friend." Boom, target is pwned.
The only surprising thing about this story is that Facebook has been around for what, 10 years, and I haven't heard about this kind of scam before. It seems straightforward enough and would work for old-fashioned financial crime as well as state espionage.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.