US authorities on Wednesday charged former Air Force intelligence
officer Monica Witt with helping Iran launch a cyber-spying operation
that targeted her former colleagues after she defected from the United
States.
The US Justice Department said Witt, 39, assembled dossiers on eight US
military intelligence agents she had worked with for Iranian hackers,
who then used Facebook and e-mail to try to install spyware on their
computers.
She defected to Iran in 2013 and presumably still lives there, US officials said.
"She decided to turn against the United States and shift her loyalty to
Iran," said Jay Tabb, the FBI's executive assistant director for
national security. "Her primary motivation appears to be ideological."
Washington also charged four Iranian nationals who it said were involved
in the cyberattacks. US officials also imposed sanctions on an Iran
firm, Net Peygard Samavat Company, that it said conducted the hacking
operation, and Iranian events company, New Horizon Organization, that it
said works to recruit foreign attendees.
Witt faces two counts of delivering military information to a foreign
government and one count of conspiracy. According to an indictment
unsealed on Wednesday, Witt served as a counterintelligence officer in
the Air Force from 1997 until 2008 and worked as contractor for two
years after that.
During that time, she was granted high-level security clearances,
learned Farsi at a US military language school, and was deployed
overseas for counterintelligence missions in the Middle East.
Witt appears to have turned against the United States some time before
February 2012, when she traveled to Iran to attend a New Horizon
conference that featured anti-US propaganda.
When warned by the FBI that trip that Iranian intelligence services were
trying to recruit her, Witt allegedly promised that she would not talk
about her counterintelligence work if she returned to Iran.
But later that year, she helped an unnamed Iranian-American official
produce an anti-American propaganda film. "I am endeavoring to put the
training I received to good use instead of evil," she told that person
in an email.
In February 2013, Witt returned to Iran for another New Horizon conference and told officials there that she wanted to emigrate.
She faced resistance for months.
"I just hope I have better luck with Russia at this point," Witt wrote
her Iranian-American contact in July. "I am starting to get frustrated
at the level of Iranian suspicion."
She successfully defected in August 2013, after providing a resume and
"conversion narrative" to her contact. "I'm signing off and heading out!
Coming home," she wrote as she was about to board her flight from Dubai
to Tehran.
Provided with housing and computer equipment by the Iranian government,
Witt tracked down US counterintelligence agents she used to work with on
Facebook, the indictment said, and disclosed the classified identity of
at least one of those agents, according to the charges.
Iranian hackers then set up fake Facebook personas to befriend those
agents and attempt to install spyware that would track their computer
activity, the indictment said. The hackers managed to gain access to a
Facebook group of US government agents.
Iranian nationals Mojtaba Masoumpour, Behzad Mesri, Hossein Parvar and
Mohamad Paryar were charged with computer intrusion and aggravated
identity theft.
Mesri, Masampour and Parvar also face sanctions for their involvement with Net Peygard, according to the US Treasury Department.
The Air Force has adjusted its security measures to prevent similar
incidents in the future, said Terry Phillips, a special agent in the Air
Force's Office of Special Investigations.https://www.geezgo.com/sps/53921
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