Briefly, Iran’s cyber ecosystem has been formed by a long time of political upheaval, revolutionary factioning and calculated exterior affect. The protecting entrance of a “pro-revolutionary” ideology, due to this fact, has lengthy been utilized by the Iranian state to justify acts of political violence, espionage, surveillance and subterfuge.
What do these teams truly signify?
Western perceptions of teams comparable to Handala Hack Workforce and CyberAv3ngers are doubtless distorted by culturally primarily based assumptions. Within the US, for instance, we are likely to affiliate phrases like “rebel” with anti-authoritarians, not authorities loyalists. Nevertheless, traditionally in Iran, civilian and army intelligence enterprises have been concurrently enmeshed and compartmentalized by design.
Whereas there hasn’t been a lot dialogue of the semantics on this situation to-date, there’s no actual qualifier stopping Handala from technically being thought-about a “radical hacktivist group” whereas additionally being a extremely intentional product of the state. Whether or not they truly carry the values that they espouse publicly is anybody’s guess.
