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Iranian-Backed Hackers Target Nuclear Workers, US Treasury Officials

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As President Donald Trump re-imposed tough economic sanctions last month on Iran, hackers wasted no time breaking into the personal emails of US officials charged with enforcing those penalties.

The news is based on information The Associated Press obtained from the London cybersecurity group Certfa.

Researchers found that over the past month a hacking group nicknamed Charming Kitten has been trying to access the emails of Treasury officials, employees of Washington, DC think tanks and other key international figures.

AP reports that other targets include high-profile defenders, detractors and enforcers of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, as well as Arab atomic scientists and Iranian civil society figures.

According to a report published Thursday by Certfa, the hackers were backed by the Iranian government.

"Presumably, some of this is about figuring out what is going on with sanctions," speculated Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written about Iranian cyber-espionage and was among those targeted.

Certfa researchers retrieved a list of 77 Gmail and Yahoo addresses from Charming Kitten's server, which the hacking group mistakenly left open to the internet last month.

AP notes that while those addresses likely only represent a fraction of those targeted, they paint a revealing picture of Tehran's espionage priorities – specifically, a general interest in nuclear technology and administration as well as an eagerness to keep tabs on officials responsible for watching over America's nuclear cache.

"This is something I've been worried about," said US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs Guy Roberts, who was among those on Charming Kitten's hit list.

Meanwhile, Kagan indicated that he finds the targeting of foreign nuclear experts to be particularly disturbing. "This is a little more worrisome than I would have expected," he said.

AP points out it's another sign of how deeply cyberespionage is embedded into the fabric of relations between the US and Iran.

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