When the Ayatollahs Outsource Their Shit to the Mob

Oh for fuck’s sake. Just when you thought the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) couldn’t get any more incompetent, those state-sponsored fuckwits have decided to buddy up with common criminals because apparently, state-level espionage is too fucking hard for them to manage alone anymore.

According to the latest intelligence—which presumably wasn’t gathered by these absolute tossers—the MOIS has been playing footsie with cybercrime syndicates like Emennet Pasargad and other ransomware-peddling shitweasels. Why? Because when your own hackers are about as subtle as a brick through a window, you need to bring in actual professionals to do the dirty work. These criminal arseholes are running ransomware schemes, stealing data, and generally making a nuisance of themselves while the MOIS sits back and takes the credit like a middle manager stealing your lunch from the fridge.

The brilliant fucking strategy here? Use criminal infrastructure to make attribution harder. “Oh, it wasn’t us, it was just some random criminals!” Yeah, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. They’re targeting everything from critical infrastructure to academic institutions, extorting Bitcoin like it’s going out of fashion, and generally proving that when it comes to cyber operations, the MOIS has all the technical sophistication of a hamster chewing on an ethernet cable.

What’s really rich is watching these government wankers pretend they’re not pulling the strings. “We’re just patriotic hackers!” Bullshit. You’re state-sponsored thugs wearing ski masks you bought with taxpayer money. The collaboration lets the MOIS deny everything while the criminals get safe harbor and a cut of the action. It’s like Bonnie and Clyde, if Clyde had a secret police force and a persecution complex.

So next time some ransomware locks up your hospital’s MRI machine or steals your university’s research data, remember: it might not just be some spotty teenager in his mum’s basement. It could be a spotty teenager being paid by a theocratic dictatorship that couldn’t hack its way out of a paper bag without hired help.

Read the full depressing details here

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I once had a user complain that their government-issued laptop was “running slow.” Turned out they’d downloaded seventeen different toolbars, three cryptocurrency miners, and what appeared to be the entire Iranian MOIS training manual in PDF form. I formatted the drive with a hammer and told them it was “upgraded to military-grade security.” They thanked me. Fucking morons.

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