Iranian hackers hijacked emails of high-level Israeli, US officials

Iranian hackers targeted the emails of senior Israeli and American officials and executives, including former foreign minister Tzipi Livni and a former US ambassador to Israel, according to the Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point.

The hackers created a fake URL shortener service called Litby.us in order to carry out their attacks. The fake service doesn’t function and if you try to create a new short URL it asks you to register for the service and send an email.

Check Point suspects that once victims enter their account ID, the phishing backend server would send a password recovery request to Yahoo and the hackers would use the authentication code to gain access to the victim’s inbox.

The attackers also used the legitimate service validation.com to steal identity documents from some of the victims. Check Point’s analysis found an indication that the attacker obtained the scan of the passport of a high end target.