On Tuesday, U.Okay.-based Iranian activist Nariman Gharib tweeted redacted screenshots of a phishing hyperlink despatched to him through a WhatsApp message.
“Don’t click on on suspicious hyperlinks,” Gharib warned. The activist, who’s following the digital aspect of the Iranian protests from afar, mentioned the marketing campaign focused individuals concerned in Iran-related actions, corresponding to himself.
This hacking marketing campaign comes as Iran grapples with the longest nationwide web shutdown in its historical past, as anti-government protests — and violent crackdowns — rage throughout the nation. Provided that Iran and its closest adversaries are extremely energetic within the offensive our on-line world (learn: hacking individuals), we wished to be taught extra.
Gharib shared the complete phishing hyperlink with TechCrunch quickly after his publish, permitting us to seize a replica of the supply code of the phishing net web page used within the assault. He additionally shared a write-up of his findings.
TechCrunch analyzed the supply code of the phishing web page, and with added enter from safety researchers, we imagine the marketing campaign aimed to steal Gmail and different on-line credentials, compromise WhatsApp accounts, and conduct surveillance by stealing location information, pictures, and audio recordings.
It’s unclear, nonetheless, if the hackers have been government-linked brokers, spies, or cybercriminals — or all three.
TechCrunch additionally recognized a strategy to view a real-time copy of all of the victims’ responses saved on the attacker’s server, which was left uncovered and accessible with out a password. This information revealed dozens of victims who had unwittingly entered their credentials into the phishing website and have been subsequently probably hacked.
The record features a Center Japanese educational working in nationwide safety research; the boss of an Israeli drone maker; a senior Lebanese cupboard minister; a minimum of one journalist; and other people in the US or with U.S. cellphone numbers.
TechCrunch is publishing our findings after validating a lot of Gharib’s report. The phishing website is now down.
Contained in the assault chain
In keeping with Gharib, the WhatsApp message he acquired contained a suspicious hyperlink, which loaded a phishing website within the sufferer’s browser.
The hyperlink reveals that the attackers relied on a dynamic DNS supplier referred to as DuckDNS for his or her phishing marketing campaign. Dynamic DNS suppliers enable individuals to attach easy-to-remember net addresses — on this case, a duckdns.org subdomain — to a server the place its IP tackle would possibly often change.
It’s not clear whether or not the attackers shut down the phishing website of their very own accord or have been caught and reduce off by DuckDNS. We reached out to DuckDNS with inquiries, however its proprietor Richard Harper requested that we ship an abuse report as a substitute.
From what we perceive, the attackers used DuckDNS to masks the true location of the phishing web page, presumably to make it seem like a real WhatsApp hyperlink.
The phishing web page was truly hosted at alex-fabow.on-line, a site that was first registered in early November 2025. This area has a number of different, associated domains hosted on the identical devoted server, and these domains comply with a sample that implies the marketing campaign additionally focused different suppliers of digital assembly rooms, like meet-safe.on-line and whats-login.on-line.
We’re undecided what occurs whereas the DuckDNS hyperlink masses within the sufferer’s browser, or how the hyperlink determines which particular phishing web page to load. It might be that the DuckDNS hyperlink redirects the goal to a particular phishing web page based mostly on data it gleans from the consumer’s machine.
The phishing web page wouldn’t load in our net browser, stopping us from immediately interacting with it. Studying the supply code of the web page, nonetheless, allowed us to higher perceive how the assault labored.
Gmail credential and cellphone quantity phishing
Relying on the goal, tapping on a phishing hyperlink would open a faux Gmail login web page, or ask for his or her cellphone quantity, and start an assault stream geared toward stealing their password and two-factor authentication code.
However the supply code of the phishing web page code had a minimum of one flaw: TechCrunch discovered that by modifying the phishing web page’s URL in our net browser, we may view a file on the attacker’s servers that was storing data of each sufferer who had entered their credentials.
The file contained over 850 data of data submitted by victims through the assault stream. These data detailed every a part of the phishing stream that the sufferer was in. This included copies of the usernames and passwords that victims had entered on the phishing web page, in addition to incorrect entries and their two-factor codes, successfully serving as a keylogger.
The data additionally contained every sufferer’s consumer agent, a string of textual content that identifies the working system and browser variations used to view web sites. This information reveals that the marketing campaign was designed to focus on Home windows, macOS, iPhone, and Android customers.
The uncovered file allowed us to comply with the assault stream step-by-step for every sufferer. In a single case, the uncovered file reveals a sufferer clicking on a malicious hyperlink, which opened a web page that regarded like a Gmail sign-in window. The log reveals the sufferer coming into their e-mail credentials a number of instances till they enter the right password.
The data present the identical sufferer coming into their two-factor authentication code despatched to them by textual content message. We will inform this as a result of Google sends two-factor codes in a particular format (normally G-xxxxxx, that includes a six-digit numerical code).
WhatsApp hijack and browser information exfiltration
Past credential theft, this marketing campaign additionally appeared to allow surveillance by tricking victims into sharing their location, audio, and footage from their machine.
In Gharib’s case, tapping on the hyperlink within the phishing message opened a faux WhatsApp-themed web page in his browser, which displayed a QR code. The lure goals to trick the goal into scanning the code on their machine, purportedly to entry a digital assembly room.
Gharib mentioned the QR code was generated by the attacker, and scanning or tapping it could immediately hyperlink the sufferer’s WhatsApp account to a tool managed by the attacker, granting them entry to the sufferer’s information. This can be a long-known assault approach that abuses the WhatsApp device linking feature and has been equally abused to target users of messaging app Signal.
We requested Granitt founder Runa Sandvik, a safety researcher who works to assist safe at-risk people, to look at a replica of the phishing web page code and see the way it features.
Sandvik discovered that when the web page loaded, the code would set off a browser notification asking the consumer for permission to entry their location (through navigator.geolocation), in addition to pictures and audio (navigator.getUserMedia).
If accepted, the browser would instantly ship the individual’s coordinates to the attacker, able to figuring out the placement of the sufferer. The web page would then proceed to share the sufferer’s location information each few seconds, for so long as the web page remained open.
The code additionally allowed the attackers to document bursts of audio and snap pictures each three to 5 seconds utilizing the machine digital camera. Nevertheless, we didn’t see any location information, audio, or photos that had been collected on the server.
Ideas on victims, timing, and attribution
We have no idea who’s behind this marketing campaign. What is obvious is that the marketing campaign was profitable in stealing credentials from victims, and it’s potential that the phishing marketing campaign may resurface.
Regardless of figuring out the identities of a number of the individuals on this cluster of victims who have been focused, we don’t have sufficient data to know the character of the marketing campaign. The variety of victims hacked by this marketing campaign (that we all know of) is pretty low — fewer than 50 people — and impacts seemingly unusual individuals throughout the Kurdish group, in addition to teachers, authorities officers, enterprise leaders, and different senior figures throughout the broader Iranian diaspora and Center East.
It might be that there are way more victims than we’re conscious of, which may assist us perceive who was focused and doubtlessly why.
The case that this could possibly be a government-backed actor
It’s unclear what motivated the hackers to steal individuals’s credentials and hijack their WhatsApp accounts, which may additionally assist establish who’s behind this hacking marketing campaign.
A government-backed group, for instance, would possibly wish to steal the e-mail password and two-factor codes of a high-value goal, like a politician or journalist, to allow them to obtain personal and confidential data.
That would make sense since Iran is at the moment virtually completely reduce off from the surface world, and getting data in or overseas presents a problem. Each the Iranian authorities, or a overseas authorities with pursuits in Iran’s affairs, may plausibly wish to know who influential Iranian-linked people are speaking with, and what about.
As such, the timing of this phishing marketing campaign and who it seems to be concentrating on may level to an espionage marketing campaign geared toward making an attempt to gather details about a slim record of individuals.
We requested Gary Miller, a safety researcher at Citizen Lab and cellular espionage skilled, to additionally evaluate the phishing code and a number of the uncovered information from the attacker’s server.
Miller mentioned the assault “definitely [had] the hallmarks of an IRGC-linked spearphishing marketing campaign,” referring to extremely focused e-mail hacks carried out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a faction of Iran’s navy recognized for finishing up cyberattacks. Miller pointed to a mixture of indications, together with the worldwide scope of sufferer concentrating on, credential theft, the abuse of in style messaging platforms like WhatsApp, and social engineering strategies used within the phishing hyperlink.
The case that this is likely to be a financially motivated actor
Alternatively, a financially motivated hacker may use the identical stolen Gmail password and two-factor code of one other high-value goal, corresponding to an organization government, to steal proprietary and delicate enterprise data from their inbox. The hacker may additionally forcibly reset passwords of their sufferer’s cryptocurrency and financial institution accounts to empty their wallets.
The marketing campaign’s concentrate on accessing a sufferer’s location and machine media, nonetheless, is uncommon for a financially motivated actor, who might need little use for footage and audio recordings.
We requested Ian Campbell, a risk researcher at DomainTools, which helps analyze public web data, to take a look at the domains used within the marketing campaign to assist perceive after they have been first arrange, and if these domains have been linked to every other beforehand recognized or recognized infrastructure.
Campbell discovered that whereas the marketing campaign focused victims within the midst of Iran’s ongoing nationwide protests, its infrastructure had been arrange weeks in the past. He added that many of the domains linked to this marketing campaign have been registered in early November 2025, and one associated area was created months again in August 2025. Campbell described the domains as medium to excessive danger and mentioned they look like linked to a cybercrime operation pushed by monetary motivations.
An extra wrinkle is that Iran’s authorities has been recognized to outsource cyberattacks to legal hacking teams, presumably to defend its involvement in hacking operations towards its residents. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned Iranian companies in the past for performing as fronts for Iran’s IRGC and conducting cyberattacks, corresponding to launching focused phishing and social engineering assaults.
As Miller notes, “This drives dwelling the purpose that clicking on unsolicited WhatsApp hyperlinks, regardless of how convincing, is a high-risk, unsafe follow.”
To securely contact this reporter, you possibly can attain out utilizing Sign through the username: zackwhittaker.1337
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting.
