In response to more activists using Apple Mac computers instead of Windows PCs, suspected Iranian government hackers have apparently developed their own Mac-based malware, according to a new report from security researchers.

The finding highlights the constant ebb-and-flow of governments disrupting and tracking activist movements. As one group adopts a new tool or technique, state-sponsored hackers may need to adapt to get the information they're after. "This demonstrates that Iranian actors are responsive to their environment," Collin Anderson, one of the security researchers behind the report, told in an email.

Physically, Adelson and Sands are well protected. He appears in public with a phalanx of armed bodyguards, said to be former agents of the U.S. Secret Service and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

Sands paid almost $3.3 million to protect Adelson and his family last year, according to a company filing. That’s on top of what Sands spends on vaults, security cameras, biometric screening devices, and one of the largest private police forces of any U.S. company, all to safeguard the millions of dollars of cash and chips that flow through its operations every day. But the company has been slow to adapt to digital threats. 

The government of Iran is no stranger to using its power to restrict Internet freedoms in its country, blocking millions of websites when they have run counter to religious or political beliefs.

Now it sounds like it plans to take that another step further: engineers are developing a system to identify any individual in the country who goes online. The idea with IDing users seems to be that by doing so, it will deter them from posting or reading contentious material by making it impossible to do so anonymously. It comes alongside wider plans to introduce filtering services to identify and block offensive content. This services would be rolled out in phases. 

After analyzing a lot of Stuxnet files collected over a two-year period, experts could identify the first victims of the Stuxnet worm. After Stuxnet was discovered over four years ago as one of the most sophisticated and dangerous malicious programs, researchers can now provide insight into the question: what were the goals of the Stuxnet operation?

Initially security researchers had no doubt that the whole attack had a targeted nature. The code of the worm looked professional and exclusive; there was evidence that extremely expensive zero-day vulnerabilities were used. However, it wasn’t yet known what kind of organizations were attacked first and how the malware ultimately made it right. 

Hackers apparently based in Iran have mounted a three-year campaign of cyberespionage against high-ranking U.S. and international officials, including a four-star admiral, to gather intelligence on economic sanctions, antinuclear proliferation efforts and other issues, according to cybersecurity investigators.

Using an elaborate ruse involving more than a dozen personas working for a fake U.S. news organization, the hackers developed connections to their targets through websites like Facebook and LinkedIn to trick them into giving up personal data and logon information, the investigators say. The alleged campaign, which dates back at least to 2011 and is still under way, principally has focused on U.S. and Israeli targets in public and private sectors.

Mark Zuckerberg has been ordered to appear in an Iranian court to answer complaints the Facebook-owned applications Instagram and WhatsApp violate individuals' privacy.

The semi-official news agency INSA quoted Ruhollah Momen Nasab, an official with the paramilitary Basij force, as saying that the judge in the south of the country had also ordered the two services be blocked. Facebook owns both Instagram and WhatsApp. It is unlikely Mr Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, will appear in court because the US and Iran do not have an extradition treaty. Similar rulings have been issued in recent years and not been carried out. A separate Iranian court ordered last week that Instagram be blocked over privacy concerns.

An Iranian court ordered the photo-sharing app Instagram be blocked in the Islamic Republic.

The agency said a court order, stemming from a private lawsuit, had been given to Iran's Ministry of Telecommunications to ban the site. However users in the capital, Tehran, still could access the application.

The decision to block the photo-sharing app Instagram was accepted by the court due to privacy concerns, the latest in a series of websites to be banned in the Islamic Republic. Citizens of the country complained that the social network breaks confidentiality of their data.