Blog #3 – The Rocket Kittens, who are they, and what are they up to now?

The Rocket Kitten Report

This report details the activities of the Rocket Kittens, showing how they’ve been tracked back to Iran, and how their leader was identified. Despite all this, the group is still active, and along with Tarh-Andishan (The Thinkers), have continued to receive governmental support.

Past and Present Iran-linked Cyber Activity

This article pointed out that not only are the two groups I’ve mentioned active, there are several other government funded cyber groups making attacks on behalf of Iran. This article details how the attacks are taking place, linking them to several scams and malware attacks against the US and other countries.

 

Reflection:

I knew that the Rocket Kittens and The Thinkers were probably still active, but I didn’t know to what extent. Nor was I aware that, after the success of their initial two groups, the Iranian government has apparently diversified their cyber activities, creating even more cyber warfare groups. I was also unaware of the particulars of *how* they were carrying out these attacks, and the two articles were quite informative in that regard. I knew what Denial-of-Service attacks were, and what phishing was, but I had no idea that they were actually using legitimate means (through authentic VPNs) to infect people’s computers, and even remotely wipe government hard drives. If I had to categorize these groups, I would say, right now, they’re radicals. Their goal appears to be to inflict as much damage as possible and tear down opposing governments. However, while the groups themselves might be radicals, I would argue that the Iranian government funding them would be political realists, working to establish a more secure nation for themselves via cyber warfare, since they were “forced” to give up their nuclear arms.

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