Iranian Hack-and-Leak: When Ceasefires Mean Nothing in Cyber.
Even with the headlines screaming “ceasefire,” Iranian crews kept hunting for soft targets: your OT networks, your data, your reputation.
This new FBI/NSA/CISA/DoD alert doesn’t break new ground — it confirms what everyone paying attention already knew:
Hack-and-leak ops are still the game. And they’re not stopping just because the front page did.
How It Went Down
No fancy zero-days, no nation-state black magic.
Same old playbook:
1. Find internet-facing OT boxes, water plants, energy, food supply, hospitals.
2. Poke at them with Shodan, default creds, dusty CVEs from 2017.
3. Pull the data, deface the site, dump the leaks on Telegram.
Instant headlines.
You don’t need an APT toolkit when your target is running factory passwords in 2025.
Why It Hits Harder Than You Think
These “hacktivists” aren’t random kids with a Telegram channel,
They’re IRGC units with a playbook:
Shake public trust
Embarrass anyone tied to Israel or U.S. critical infrastructure
Use leaks and defacements as cheap PR to look bigger than they are
It’s propaganda, but it works. People see a water utility or a hospital pop up in a dump and suddenly every local news outlet picks up the “cyber attack” angle.
The Part No One Wants to Admit
The pivot’s the killer,
They don’t just grab what’s easy, they move sideways:
From one vendor to an entire supply chain
From old IT boxes into ICS gear no one’s watching
From one breach to the next, reusing your stolen creds until you notice
They know half the market’s not watching OT telemetry. They know you’ll probably chase the ransomware noise instead of the real persistence.
Don’t Celebrate Too Soon
The ceasefire banners don’t mean your logs are clean,
If you’re in critical infra, water, food, energy, hospitals, this is your sign to get loud, not quiet.
Next up:
More “patriotic leak groups” fronting for the IRGC
More vendor chains popping like dominos
More hack-and-leak distractions for actual hands-on persistence
The CodeAIntel Take
This is the cheapest version of hybrid warfare, and it works because we keep giving them the same old gaps: forgotten edge gear, default creds, zero segmentation.
So patch the edge gear,
Pull a Shodan on yourself before they do,
Hunt for your name in places you wish you didn’t have to,
And stop pretending OT doesn’t touch your brand, because when the water stops flowing, you’re on the front page, not them.
Silence helps them, don’t give it to them.