After the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's launched a cartoon contest to mock Iran's ruling cleric, a state-backed Iranian cyber unit struck back with a hack-and-leak campaign that was designed to provoke fear with the claimed pilfering of a big subscriber database, Microsoft security researchers say.
The FBI blames the same Iranian cyber operators, Emennet Pasargad, for an influence operation that sought to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the tech giant said in a blog published Friday. Iran has in recent years stepped up false-flag cyber operations as a tool for discrediting foes.
