Ex-Facebook worker imprisoned by Iran, pressured to spy

Behdad Esfahbod, who was detained in Tehrans Evin Prison in January and left Facebook last month, said he chose not to spy and never informed the social media giant of his agreement with the Iranian government.

Technology companies, particularly social media sites such as Facebook, are becoming bigger targets for cyberattackers looking to cultivate insiders who can collect private information yielding governmental secrets or personally identifiable information such as passwords and accounts or for blackmail schemes.

As Twitter fell prey to a coordinated social engineering attack aimed at its employees this summer, Mr. Esfahbod, an Iranian Canadian software engineer, was preparing to leave Facebook.

Facebook declined to comment on Mr. Esfahbods situation, as did the Iranian government, but foreign adversaries pressuring technology workers is not a new phenomenon.

Iranian intelligence services seek to steal advanced technology from the United States as well as to identify other Iranian nationals who are working in the high-tech industry for future targeting.

Mr. Roule said informants who work at social media companies can provide information on Iranian opposition figures, their followers and their potential funding sources.

Mr. Esfahbod said the Iranians coerced him to agree to spy on activists working to create open internet and greater freedoms in Iran, including from such groups as United for Iran in Berkeley, California, the technology group ASL19, and Small Media in the United Kingdom.

Iran Internationals director of programming is Hossein Rassam, a former chief political analyst at the British Embassy in Tehran, according to The Telegraph in London.

Original article