Operation Spider or Project Spider is a surveillance programme by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to monitor Iranian internet users on social media such as Facebook. The operation was publicized in January 2015 with a statement by IRGC's "The Center for Investigation of Organized Crime". The program is said to be expanding to Instagram, Viber, and WhatsApp. [2]
Since September 2014, the IRGC intensified its review of Facebook pages, and that 350 Facebook pages managed by 36 individuals had been identified and 130 of them deleted from Facebook. [3]
In January 2015, 12 Iranian Facebook users were arrested and 24 other citizens were summoned to answer questions about their Facebook activities. [4]
On January 31, a statement by the Center for Investigation of Organized Cyber Crimes was published that stated several Facebook users had been arrested in a surveillance project by the IRGC named “Operation Spider” that is aimed at identifying and rooting out Facebook pages and activities that spread “corruption” and western-inspired lifestyles. The statement also says they "received indirect and covert support from the Western governments and had targeted a remarkable number of Facebook users in the guise of cultural and social pages over a span of two years". [5]
In 2016, Operation Spider II was used to detect Iranian models posting images of themselves online not wearing a headscarf. The models were subsequently charged with “promoting western promiscuity”. [6] The Iranian models were arrested and forced to give public self-criticism for posting the pictures. [7]
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, founded after the Iranian Revolution on 22 April 1979 by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Whereas the Iranian Army defends Iranian borders and maintains internal order, according to the Iranian constitution, the Revolutionary Guard is intended to protect the country's Islamic republic political system. The Revolutionary Guards base their role in protecting the Islamic system as well as preventing foreign interference and coups by the military or "deviant movements".
Mohsen Rezaee is an Iranian conservative politician affiliated with the Resistance Front of Islamic Iran and senior military officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who currently holds office as the Vice President of Iran for Economic Affairs, secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, secretary of the Supreme Council for Economic Coordination, as well as the secretary of the Iranian government's Economic Committee.
The Quds Force is one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations. U.S. Army's Iraq War General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the United States. Responsible for extraterritorial operations, the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
Social network services are increasingly being used in legal and criminal investigations. Information posted on sites such as Instagram, Orkut, and Facebook has been used by police and university officials to prosecute users of said sites. In some situations, content posted on Myspace has been used in court to determine an appropriate sentence based on a defendant's attitude.
Political repression of cyber-dissidents is the oppression or persecution of people for expressing their political views on the Internet.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces are the combined military forces of Iran, comprising the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (Arteš), the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepâh) and the Law Enforcement Force (Police).
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations. In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, as well as the second-most powerful person in Iran behind him.
Internet censorship in South Korea is prevalent, and contains some unique elements such as the blocking of pro-North Korea websites, and to a lesser extent, Japanese websites, which led to it being categorized as "pervasive" in the conflict/security area by OpenNet Initiative. South Korea is also one of the few developed countries where pornography is largely illegal, with the exception of social media websites which are a common source of legal pornography in the country. Any and all material deemed "harmful" or subversive by the state is censored. The country also has a "cyber defamation law", which allow the police to crack down on comments deemed "hateful" without any reports from victims, with citizens being sentenced for such offenses.
Propaganda in Iran originates from the Iranian government and "private" entities, which are usually state controlled.
The Syrian Electronic Army is a group of computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, phishing, and denial-of-service attacks, it has targeted terrorist organizations, political opposition groups, western news outlets, human rights groups and websites that are seemingly neutral to the Syrian conflict. It has also hacked government websites in the Middle East and Europe, as well as US defense contractors. As of 2011 the SEA has been "the first Arab country to have a public Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyber attacks on its enemies".
The Iranian Cyber Police (Persian: پلیس فضای تولید و تبادل اطلاعات ایران, Pelis-e Fezai-ye Tulid-e vâ Tebadâl-e Atlâ'at-e Iran, lit. The Police for the Sphere of the Production and Exchange of Information also known as FATA is a unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran Police, founded in January 2011. In December 2012, the head of Tehran's cyber police unit was dismissed in relation to the death of Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti, who was being held in the cyber police's custody.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Syrian Arab Republic are close strategic allies, and Iran has provided significant support for the Syrian government in the Syrian civil war, including logistical, technical and financial support, as well as training and some combat troops. Iran sees the survival of the Syrian government as being crucial to its regional interests. When the uprising developed into the Syrian Civil War, there were increasing reports of Iranian military support, and of Iranian training of the National Defence Forces both in Syria and Iran.
Soheil Arabi, is an Iranian blogger who was sentenced to death in Iran in 2013 on charges of insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in his postings on Facebook about Atena Daemi. His sentence was commuted in 2015 to several years imprisonment and two years of mandatory study of Islamic theology.
Cyberwarfare is a part of Iran's "soft war" military strategy. Being both a victim and wager of cyberwarfare, Iran is considered an emerging military power in the field.
The Sistan and Baluchestan insurgency, part of the Balochistan conflict, began approximately in 2004 and is an ongoing low-intensity asymmetric conflict in Sistan and Baluchestan Province between Iran and several Baloch Sunni militant organizations which are designated as terrorist organizations by Iran.
On January 12, 2016, two United States Navy riverine command boats were seized by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy after they entered Iranian territorial waters near Iran's Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. Initially, the U.S. military claimed the sailors inadvertently entered Iranian waters owing to mechanical failure, but it was later reported that they entered Iranian waters because of navigational errors. The U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, called the Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif within five minutes. His call was followed by multiple other phone calls between the two ministers. The sailors had a brief verbal exchange with the Iranian military and were released, unharmed, 15 hours later.
2016–present clashes in West Iran refers to the ongoing military clashes between Kurdish insurgent party Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which began in April 2016. Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) and Komalah expressed their support to the Kurdish cause of PDKI as well, with both clashing with Iranian security forces in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In parallel, a leftist Iranian Kurdish rebel group PJAK resumed military activities against Iran in 2016, following a long period of stalemate.
The 2017 Tehran attacks were a series of two simultaneous terrorist attacks occurred on 7 June 2017 that were carried out by five terrorists belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against the Iranian Parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, both in Tehran, Iran, leaving 17 civilians dead and 43 wounded. The shootings were the first terrorist attacks in Tehran in more than a decade, and the first major terror attack in the country since the 2010 Zahedan bombings.
The Tapandegan is an Iranian hacker group known for hacking twice the arrival and departure monitors at two major international airports in Iran on May 24, 2018 and June 6, 2018 respectively, posting anti-government messages and images, forcing the airports’ authorities to turn off manually those monitors one-by-one.
On June 20, 2019, Iran's integrated system of Air Defense Forces shot down a United States RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone with a surface-to-air missile over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and the U.S. differ on where the incident actually occurred. Iranian officials said that the drone violated their airspace, while U.S. officials responded that the drone was in international airspace.
