Azerbaijan, Baku, July 19/Trend M. Moezzi
Unauthorised withdrawals from customers' bank accounts make up the greatest share of Iran's cyberspace crimes and account for 5.5 per cent of unlawful acts.
General Kamal Hadianfar, the head of the Information Production and Exchange Department of the Law Enforcement Police (FETA), said his organisation has met frequently with the Central Bank of Iran to discuss the issue, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reports.
As for the new 'Mahdi' virus making the rounds on the internet, General Hadianfar said it hasn't caused serious damage to Iran's computer network. Information gathered by 'Mahdi, said the General, has been traced to Canadian servers although it's not clear Canada is the final destination for it.
As for the recent cyber-attack on Iran's Oil Ministry, the cyberspace police chief said the hackers' internet provider (IP) address was created in the United States. The cyber-attack was launched on April 22 and led Iran's Oil Ministry to disconnect its computer system from the internet.
The U.S. has not responded to Iran's official request that the hackers in the Oil Ministry case be identified.
The Iranian government's computer network has been the target of repeated attacks.
Early this summer, Iran announced it had discovered an information gathering virus in its systems. That virus called Flame, was the third programme to have targeted Iran for the purpose of gathering information, or attacking a specific system.
In 2010, Iran's industrial and nuclear computer systems were attacked by the Stuxnet worm.
The worm was a malware designed to infect computers using Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), a control system favoured by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs and power plants.
Stuxnet was followed by Duqu, a virus designed to gather data for future cyber-attacks. Iran announced the discovery of Duqu in November 2011.