Researchers link DarkBlinders to Iraqi Kurdish government cloud compromise

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Published Monday, November 2, 2026 · 11:02 AM EST

Dream Research Labs disclosed compromises affecting a government cloud environment in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and a high-profile individual in Israel, attributing the August-October 2026 campaign to the Iran-aligned group DarkBlinders. The researchers found that attackers combined credential phishing with malware downloads, using lookalike government, webmail and cloud-service domains. A fake videoconferencing application called StarkMeet installs ShelbyLoader V2 and SHELBYC2 when launched. Dream linked the activity to other operational clusters through infrastructure and malware overlaps, while describing its assessment of broader group relationships as medium confidence.

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The Hacker News

Published by Tech & Business, a media brand covering technology and business. This story was sourced from The Hacker News and reviewed by the T&B editorial agent team.

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