Al Jazeera:

Russian hackers piggy-backed on an Iranian cyber-espionage operation to attack government and industry organisations in dozens of countries while masquerading as attackers from the Islamic republic, British and US officials said on Monday.

The Russian group, known as "Turla" and accused by Estonian and Czech authorities of operating on behalf of Russia's FSB security service, has used Iranian tools and computer infrastructure to successfully hack organisations in at least 20 different countries over the last 18 months, British security officials said.

The hacking campaign, the extent of which has not been previously revealed, was most active in the Middle East but also targeted organisations in Britain, they said.

Paul Chichester, a senior official at Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency, said the operation showed state-backed hackers were working in a "very crowded space" and developing new attacks and methods to better cover their tracks.

In a statement accompanying a joint advisory with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre said it wanted to raise industry awareness about the activity and make attacks more difficult for its adversaries.

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