BSI, the German cybersecurity agency, took down this week a web server used to control malware deployed by the Iranian government to spy on participants of recent anti-government protests.
The server was identified over the weekend by Hamid Kashfi, a security engineer at Trail Of Bits, who confirmed a tip that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military, was manually installing malware on the devices of detained anti-government protesters.
As of two days ago I managed to confirm (can't say how) that the case is a work of IRGC's Intelligence branch, which then justified immediate reaction. Confirmed samples were also obtained. The C2 is now down, thanks to Germany's BSI. https://t.co/GT9G3vn5HK
— Hamid (@hkashfi) October 18, 2022
Kashfi obtained multiple copies of the malware—which he later identified as a version of the L3MON Android remote access trojan—and found that all samples were communicating with a VPS server based in Germany, on which the BSI acted this week.
The researcher is now warning that even if this server is now down, the danger to protesters continues, as IRGC operators are most likely to set up a new one for subsequent deployments.
Iranians detained by the IRCG are advised to reset their smartphones as Kashfi says that the L3MON RAT has no advanced persistence capabilities, and this will remove it from compromised devices.
اینطور نیست. این بدافزار قابلیت های persistence پیشرفته ایی نداره که با پاک کردن همه محتوای گوشی از بین نره. منظور از فکتوری ریست اینجا فقط ریست کردن تنظیمات نیست. اشاره به پاک کردن کل محتوای گوشی هست که بخشی از اون فراینده.
— Hamid (@hkashfi) October 18, 2022
