Iranian Cyber Espionage

The culture, history and language of Persia are indelible. Since the rule of Cyrus the Great in 550 BC, dynastic and monarchical Persian empires maintained hegemonic influence over the Middle East for 2500 years. This longstanding dominance dissipated in 1979, when a revolution was waged by multiple political factions against the last Shah of Iran, eventually leading to the usurp of power by a clergy-led state. From that point, the Islamic Republic of Iran has sought to reconstitute itself as a regional hegemony, expanding its presence by quietly inserting itself into surrounding conflicts. In the era of digital industrialization, where geographic boundaries are blurred by binary code, Iran leverages the cyberspace domain to conduct soft war against its adversaries, engaging in both destructive cyber operations and espionage-oriented ones. In an effort to provide a more detailed analysis on the latter of these two categories, IRANIAN CYBER ESPIONAGE outlines this use of cyber warfare to achieve intelligence objectives, chronicling and detailing tactics by the most prominent Iranian cyber threat actors, and analyzing the results to make determinations about Iran as a 21st century cyber power