On Tuesday, U.Ok.-based Iranian activist Nariman Gharib tweeted redacted screenshots of a phishing hyperlink despatched to him by way of a WhatsApp message.
“Don’t click on on suspicious hyperlinks,” Gharib warned. The activist, who’s following the digital facet of the Iranian protests from afar, mentioned the marketing campaign focused folks 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. On condition that Iran and its closest adversaries are extremely energetic within the offensive our on-line world (learn: hacking folks), we needed to be taught extra.
Gharib shared the total phishing hyperlink with TechCrunch quickly after his submit, permitting us to seize a duplicate of the supply code of the phishing internet 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, images, and audio recordings.
It’s unclear, nonetheless, if the hackers had been government-linked brokers, spies, or cybercriminals — or all three.
TechCrunch additionally recognized a solution 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 had been subsequently possible hacked.
The record features a Center Japanese tutorial working in nationwide safety research; the boss of an Israeli drone maker; a senior Lebanese cupboard minister; a minimum of one journalist; and folks in the US or with U.S. telephone 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
Based on Gharib, the WhatsApp message he obtained contained a suspicious hyperlink, which loaded a phishing website within the sufferer’s browser.
The hyperlink exhibits that the attackers relied on a dynamic DNS supplier known as DuckDNS for his or her phishing marketing campaign. Dynamic DNS suppliers permit folks to attach easy-to-remember internet addresses — on this case, a duckdns.org subdomain — to a server the place its IP deal with may steadily change.
It’s not clear whether or not the attackers shut down the phishing website of their very own accord or had 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 actual location of the phishing web page, presumably to make it appear to be a real WhatsApp hyperlink.
The phishing web page was really hosted at alex-fabow.on-line, a website 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 unsure 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 selected phishing web page primarily based on data it gleans from the person’s system.
The phishing web page wouldn’t load in our internet 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 telephone quantity phishing
Relying on the goal, tapping on a phishing hyperlink would open a pretend Gmail login web page, or ask for his or her telephone quantity, and start an assault circulation 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 internet browser, we might view a file on the attacker’s servers that was storing information of each sufferer who had entered their credentials.
The file contained over 850 information of knowledge submitted by victims in the course of the assault circulation. These information detailed every a part of the phishing circulation 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 information additionally contained every sufferer’s person agent, a string of textual content that identifies the working system and browser variations used to view web sites. This information exhibits 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 circulation step-by-step for every sufferer. In a single case, the uncovered file exhibits a sufferer clicking on a malicious hyperlink, which opened a web page that appeared like a Gmail sign-in window. The log exhibits the sufferer getting into their electronic mail credentials a number of occasions till they enter the right password.
The information present the identical sufferer getting into their two-factor authentication code despatched to them by textual content message. We are able to inform this as a result of Google sends two-factor codes in a selected format (often 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 photos from their system.
In Gharib’s case, tapping on the hyperlink within the phishing message opened a pretend 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 system, purportedly to entry a digital assembly room.
Gharib mentioned the QR code was generated by the attacker, and scanning or tapping it might 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 method that abuses the WhatsApp system linking characteristic and has been equally abused to goal customers of messaging app Sign.
We requested Granitt founder Runa Sandvik, a safety researcher who works to assist safe at-risk people, to look at a duplicate of the phishing web page code and see the way it capabilities.
Sandvik discovered that when the web page loaded, the code would set off a browser notification asking the person for permission to entry their location (by way of navigator.geolocation), in addition to images 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 report bursts of audio and snap images each three to 5 seconds utilizing the system digicam. Nonetheless, we didn’t see any location information, audio, or photographs 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 evident is that the marketing campaign was profitable in stealing credentials from victims, and it’s attainable that the phishing marketing campaign might resurface.
Regardless of realizing the identities of a number of the folks on this cluster of victims who had been focused, we don’t have sufficient data to grasp 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 abnormal folks throughout the Kurdish neighborhood, 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 might assist us perceive who was focused and doubtlessly why.
The case that this may very well be a government-backed actor
It’s unclear what motivated the hackers to steal folks’s credentials and hijack their WhatsApp accounts, which might additionally assist establish who’s behind this hacking marketing campaign.
A government-backed group, for instance, may 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 might make sense since Iran is at the moment virtually fully reduce off from the skin world, and getting data in or in another country presents a problem. Each the Iranian authorities, or a overseas authorities with pursuits in Iran’s affairs, might 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 might level to an espionage marketing campaign geared toward attempting to gather details about a slim record of individuals.
We requested Gary Miller, a safety researcher at Citizen Lab and cell espionage knowledgeable, to additionally evaluation the phishing code and a number of the uncovered information from the attacker’s server.
Miller mentioned the assault “actually [had] the hallmarks of an IRGC-linked spearphishing marketing campaign,” referring to extremely focused electronic mail hacks carried out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a faction of Iran’s army 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 methods used within the phishing hyperlink.
The case that this is likely to be a financially motivated actor
Alternatively, a financially motivated hacker might 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 might additionally forcibly reset passwords of their sufferer’s cryptocurrency and financial institution accounts to empty their wallets.
The marketing campaign’s give attention to accessing a sufferer’s location and system media, nonetheless, is uncommon for a financially motivated actor, who may need little use for photos and audio recordings.
We requested Ian Campbell, a menace researcher at DomainTools, which helps analyze public web information, to have a look at the domains used within the marketing campaign to assist perceive once they had been first arrange, and if these domains had been related to another 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 a lot of the domains related to this marketing campaign had 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 threat and mentioned they look like linked to a cybercrime operation pushed by monetary motivations.
A further wrinkle is that Iran’s authorities has been recognized to outsource cyberattacks to felony hacking teams, presumably to protect its involvement in hacking operations in opposition to its residents. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned Iranian firms previously for appearing 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, irrespective of how convincing, is a high-risk, unsafe observe.”
To securely contact this reporter, you may attain out utilizing Sign by way of the username: zackwhittaker.1337
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting.
