Spy uses subcontractors for access

Supply chain penetration is a vulnerability that has been in the news a lot recently. Corporations and governments know that IT systems hold the keys to the kingdom, but so far they have not been able to batten down the hatches of the supply chain. Corporations don’t want information about these types of problems to become public, so we should not look at these problems as some type of anomaly. These are just a few incidents that have made it into the press recently.

Iranian espionage case posted on ZDNet.

Following Pakistan’s recently introduced “Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance 2008” according to which potential cyberterrorists would face the death penalty, a neighboring country, Iran, has recently executed an IT expert who confessed of being an Israeli spy for at least three years. After being recruited by Mossad during a business trip, Ali Ashtari, a trusted supplier of electronic and military equipment for the Iranian government, was allowing Israeli intelligence agents to backdoor the equipment he would later on install in Iranian military and government centers.