Jay Solomon has an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal [Iranian Hacking Surges in U.S.] which says Iran's hackers are being trained by the Russians. His source was an "administration official" which usually means anyone within a stone's throw of the White House, but in this case it appears to be someone in the State Department. Ironically, the State Department email systems were said to be hacked last year by the Russians. They probably know where to look. Apparently, according to this article, several administration officials there have been hacked in recent weeks.
It is unlikely that Iran has stopped hacking long enough to start back up on something like the arrest of an energy executive living in Iran. They have been at it since they hacked into Linkedin and other social media sites looking for friends of their enemies. That was years ago. Unless they want us to know that they are stepping up these efforts, they don't have a lot of reasons to be so clumsy.
The idea that Iran is getting training from the Russians is certainly interesting. It looks like Russia is going the way of China in getting proxies to do their work for them. The proxies allow them to say, "It wasn't us." That makes attribution harder. It makes retaliation harder. Since the U.S. is doing little to nothing about people hacking us anyway, it hardly matters.
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