Iranian hackers infiltrated airlines, defence companies across world, claim experts

Researchers say that Iranian hackers breached various companies across the world including airlines, energy companies, telecommunications firms and government agencies.

According to The Independent, the experts said the attackers took large amounts of data including sensitive employee information and schedules, ID photos, information about airport and airline security and PDFs of diagrams of important infrastructure.

Experts say the type of data stolen by the hackers are indicative of malicious motives other than financial ones.

Cybersecurity firm Cylance said in its report titled 'Operation Cleaver' that a team of hackers pretending to be a construction company in Tehran infiltrated some 50 companies in 15 countries.

The researchers named the report 'Operation Cleaver' because the hackers used 'cleaver' several times in the custom software that was used in the attacks.

The report added that the hackers used a range of tools to break into the companies.