Baku, Azerbaijan, May 26
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
The cyber police of Iran have accused the US of new cyber attacks against the Iranian oil ministry website.
The attacks continued for four days during the holidays of Iranian New Year (started on March 21), Brigadier General Kamal Hadianfar, head of the Islamic Republic Cyber Police (FATA) said, Fars news agency reported May 26.
The attacks carried on from IPs inside the United States, Hadianfar said, adding the security measures were taken as the ports of the attacks closed and the attacks were neutralized.
He also said that Iran has sent an official letter to the US on the issue. The Islamic Republic pursues the issue via legal organizations, Hadianfar noted.
He also said that the Iranian foreign ministry is pursuing the case as well.
It is not the first time that Tehran says the US -based hackers have attacked its oil ministry.
Hadianfar already accused the US of attacking the oil ministry website back in April of 2012, which made the website unavailable for several hours.
"The carried investigation revealed that the attacks were made from the US, and the Iranian side immediately sent a letter to the US government asking them to provide detailed information about the attackers," Hadianfar said in 2013.
He also claimed that due to attacks, some general information has been stolen from the website, however the security measures allowed Iran to protect sensitive databases from the attacks.
Wide-scale cyber attacks on Iranian facilities started in 2010 after the US and Israel reportedly tried to disrupt the operation of Iran 's nuclear facilities through a worm that later came to be known as Stuxnet.
US intelligence officials revealed in June 2013 that the Stuxnet malware was not only designed to disrupt Iran 's nuclear program, but was part of a wider campaign directed from Israel that included the assassination of the country's nuclear scientists.
Stuxnet is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems. It is specifically written to attack SCADA systems that are used to control and monitor industrial processes.
In September 2013, the Islamic Republic said that the computer worm of Stuxnet infected 30,000 IP addresses in Iran, but it denied the reports that the cyber worm had damaged computer systems at the country's nuclear power plants.
Edited by CN
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