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, stated the marketing campaign focused individuals concerned in Iran-related actions, similar to himself.
This hacking marketing campaign comes as Iran grapples with the longest nationwide internet shutdown in its history, 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 individuals), we wished to study 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 consider 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 had been government-linked brokers, spies, or cybercriminals — or all three.
TechCrunch additionally recognized a approach 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 no password. This information revealed dozens of victims who had unwittingly entered their credentials into the phishing web site and had been subsequently doubtless hacked.
The checklist features a Center Jap educational working in nationwide safety research; the boss of an Israeli drone maker; a senior Lebanese cupboard minister; no less than 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 web site is now down.
Contained in the assault chain
In accordance with Gharib, the WhatsApp message he acquired contained a suspicious hyperlink, which loaded a phishing web site 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 individuals to attach easy-to-remember net addresses — on this case, a duckdns.org subdomain — to a server the place its IP deal with may often change.
It’s not clear if the attackers shut down the phishing web site on their very own accord, or had been caught and minimize off by DuckDNS. We reached out to DuckDNS with inquiries, however its proprietor Richard Harper requested that we ship an abuse report as an alternative.
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 really 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 observe a sample that means that 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 hundreds within the sufferer’s browser, or how the hyperlink determines which particular phishing web page to load. It could be that the DuckDNS hyperlink redirects the goal to a selected phishing web page based mostly on data it gleans from the person’s gadget.
The phishing web page wouldn’t load in our net browser, stopping us from straight interacting with it. Studying the supply code of the web page, nonetheless, allowed us to raised perceive how the assault labored.
Gmail credential and telephone 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 telephone quantity, and start an assault circulation aimed toward stealing their password and two-factor authentication code.
However the supply code of the phishing web page code had no less than one flaw: TechCrunch discovered that by modifying the phishing web page’s URL in our net browser, we might 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 knowledge submitted by victims throughout the assault circulation. These data 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 data additionally contained every sufferer’s user-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 observe 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 regarded like a Gmail sign-in window. The log exhibits the sufferer coming into their electronic mail credentials a number of occasions 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 selected 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 gadget.
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 gadget, purportedly to entry a digital assembly room.
Gharib stated 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. It is 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 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 pictures and audio (navigator.getUserMedia).
If accepted, the browser would instantly ship the individual’s coordinates to the attacker, able to figuring out the situation 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 gadget digicam. Nonetheless, we didn’t see any location information, audio, or pictures 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 doable that the phishing marketing campaign might resurface.
Regardless of figuring out the identities of a number of the individuals 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 each seemingly odd individuals 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 could be that there are much more victims than we’re conscious of, which might assist us perceive who was focused and probably 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 might additionally assist establish who’s behind this hacking marketing campaign.
A government-backed group, for instance, may need 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 totally minimize off from the surface world, and getting data in or overseas presents a problem. Each the Iranian authorities, or a international authorities with pursuits in Iran’s affairs, might plausibly need to know whom 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 aimed toward attempting to gather details about a slim checklist of individuals.
We requested Gary Miller, a safety researcher at Citizen Lab and cell espionage skilled, to additionally overview the phishing code and a number of the uncovered information from the attacker’s server.
Miller stated the assault “actually [had] the hallmarks of an IRGC-linked spearphishing marketing campaign,” referring to highly-targeted email 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 well-liked messaging platforms like WhatsApp, and social engineering techniques used within the phishing hyperlink.
The case that this may be a financially motivated actor
Then again, a financially motivated hacker might use the identical stolen Gmail password and two-factor code of one other high-value goal, similar to an organization govt, 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 concentrate on accessing a sufferer’s location and gadget 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 try the domains used within the marketing campaign to assist perceive after they had been first arrange, and if these domains had been related to some 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 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-high threat, and stated 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 prison hacking teams, presumably to protect its involvement in hacking operations towards its residents. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned Iranian companies in the past for appearing as fronts for Iran’s IRGC and conducting cyberattacks, similar to launching focused phishing and social engineering assaults.
As Miller notes, “This drives house the purpose that clicking on unsolicited WhatsApp hyperlinks, regardless of how convincing, is a high-risk, unsafe apply.”
To securely contact this reporter, you possibly can attain out utilizing Sign by way of the username: zackwhittaker.1337
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting.
