Charming_Kitten__2016__Iranian_Hackers_Targeted_US_Officials_in_Elaborate_Social_Media_Attack_Operation_SecurityWeek.pdf

SecurityWeek reports on iSIGHT Partners' discovery of the multi-year "NEWSCASTER" cyber-espionage campaign (since 2011) in which Iranian-based operators used over a dozen fabricated personas and a faux news site to befriend and harvest credentials from high-value targets via social networks; the operation combined large-scale social-engineering, spear-phishing to credential-harvest, and some malware for data exfiltration, affecting over 2,000 connected individuals including U.S. officials, journalists, think tanks and defense contractors.