Microsoft: Iran Accelerates Its Cyber Influence Operations Worldwide

The logo of American Microsoft on its pavilion at a world tech fair in Barcelona last year. (AFP)
The logo of American Microsoft on its pavilion at a world tech fair in Barcelona last year. (AFP)
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Microsoft: Iran Accelerates Its Cyber Influence Operations Worldwide

The logo of American Microsoft on its pavilion at a world tech fair in Barcelona last year. (AFP)
The logo of American Microsoft on its pavilion at a world tech fair in Barcelona last year. (AFP)

Microsoft warned that Iran is accelerating its cyber-enabled influence operations to go in tandem with its geopolitical goals worldwide.

“Iran continues to be a significant threat actor, and it is now supplementing its traditional cyberattacks with a new playbook, leveraging cyber-enabled influence operations (IO) to achieve its geopolitical aims,” a report published by the company on Tuesday revealed.

Microsoft has detected these efforts rapidly accelerating since June 2022.

Microsoft said it attributed 24 unique cyber-enabled influence operations to the Iranian government last year compared to just seven in 2021.

The report added that most of Iran’s cyber-enabled influence operations are being run by Emennet Pasargad – which is sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for attempts to undermine the integrity of the 2020 US Presidential Elections.

Though Iran’s techniques may have changed, its targets have not. These operations remain focused on Israel, prominent Iranian opposition figures and groups, and the Gulf countries, according to Microsoft.

“Iran directed nearly a quarter (23%) of its cyber operations against Israel between October of 2022 and March of 2023, with the United States, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia also bearing the brunt of these efforts.”

The goals of its cyber-enabled IO have included seeking to bolster Palestinian groups that are allied to Iran, fomenting unrest in Bahrain, and sowing panic and fear among Israeli citizens.

“Iran has also adopted cyber-enabled IO to undercut the momentum of nationwide protests by leaking information that aims to embarrass prominent regime opposition figures.”

Microsoft added that most of these operations have a predictable playbook, in which Iran uses a cyber persona to publicize and exaggerate a low-sophistication cyberattack, using the language of the target audience.

“New Iranian influence techniques include their use of SMS messaging and victim impersonation to enhance the effectiveness of their amplification”, the report added.



Harvard Rejects Trump Demands, Gets Hit by $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze 

A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)
A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)
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Harvard Rejects Trump Demands, Gets Hit by $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze 

A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)
A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP)

Harvard on Monday rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist. Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.

The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.

On Monday, a Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism accused America's oldest university of having a "troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges - that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."

The exchange escalates the high-stakes dispute between the Trump administration and some of the world's richest universities that has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.

The administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for numerous universities, pressing the institutions to make policy changes and citing what it says is a failure to fight antisemitism on campus.

Deportation proceedings have begun against some detained foreign students who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, while visas for hundreds of other students have been canceled.

Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a public letter on Monday that demands made by the Department of Education last week would allow the federal government "to control the Harvard community" and threaten the school's "values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge."

"No government - regardless of which party is in power - should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," Garber wrote.

The issue of antisemitism on campus erupted before Trump took office for his second term, following pro-Palestinian student protests last year at several universities following the 2023 Hamas attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza.

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement on Monday that Trump was "working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked antisemitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard's support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence."

In a letter on Friday, the education department stated that Harvard had "failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment."

The department demanded that Harvard, work to reduce the influence of faculty, staff and students who are "more committed to activism than scholarship" and have an external panel audit the faculty and students of each department to ensure "viewpoint diversity."

The letter also stated that Harvard, by this August, must only hire faculty and admit students based on merit and cease all preferences based on race, color or national origin. The university must also screen international students "to prevent admitting students hostile to American values" and report to federal immigration authorities foreign students who violate conduct rules.

Last week, a group of Harvard professors sued to block the Trump administration's review of nearly $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to the school.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering forcing fellow Ivy League school Columbia into a consent decree that would legally bind the school to follow federal guidelines in how it combats antisemitism.

Some Columbia professors, like those at Harvard, have sued the federal government in response. The government has suspended $400 million in federal funding and grants to Columbia.

Harvard President Garber said the federal government's demands that it "audit" the viewpoints of its students, faculty and staff to ferret out left-wing thinkers generally opposed to the Trump administration clearly violated the university's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

"The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," Garber wrote.

He added that while Harvard is taking steps to address antisemitism on campus, "these ends will not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate."

Harvard agreed in January to provide additional protections for Jewish students under a settlement resolving two lawsuits accusing the Ivy League school of becoming a hotbed of antisemitism.

To ease any funding crunch created by any cutoff in federal funding, Harvard is working to borrow $750 million from Wall Street.