TEHRAN: Iran blames foreign country for cyberattack on petrol stations

TEHRAN: Iran has said a foreign country
was behind a cyberattack that paralysed its petrol distribution network recently.

A group
called itself Predatory Sparrow claimed it carried out the hack, but Iran’s top
internet policy-making body blamed an unnamed “state actor”.

President
Ebrahim Raisi said the attack was about “stoking public anger”.

The
attack hit an intranet-based system that lets motorists buy subsidised fuel
with government-issued smart cards, causing long queues at petrol stations.

The
hackers also hijacked digital billboards on highways in the capital Tehran and
elsewhere, making them display a message saying: “[Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, where is our fuel?”

Only 5% of the country’s 4,300
petrol stations had been reconnected by Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for
the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) told state
media.

However,
almost 3,000 were able to sell fuel “offline” at the unsubsidised
price, she added.

Most
people depend on subsidised fuel in Iran, whose economy has been badly damaged
by years of US sanctions, as well as government mismanagement and corruption.

“Some
are aiming to stoke public anger by creating chaos and disrupting people’s
lives,” Mr Raisi told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The
president also claimed that “vigilance” by Iranian authorities had
prevented the hackers from taking advantage of the situation.

The
secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, Abolhassan Firuzabadi, said the
attack was carried out by a foreign country, but that it was “too early to
announce by which country and in which way it was done”.

Media caption, Protesters took to
the streets in 2019 as fuel price rises were introduced

The
semi-official Fars news agency meanwhile linked the hack to the second
anniversary of the mass protests that erupted across Iran after the
government raised the price of petrol by 50%.

The
unrest prompted a bloody crackdown by the security forces. Amnesty
International said more than 300 people were killed, but Iranian officials
dismissed the figure.

In a post
on Telegram, Predatory Sparrow said that the hack was a “response to the
cyber actions by Tehran’s terrorist regime against the people in the region and
around the world”.

It added
that it had warned Iran’s emergency services personnel in advance and had
chosen not to exploit a vulnerability that would have caused “very
long-term damage”.

The group
also announced that it was behind a cyberattack on Iran’s rail network in July,
which caused message boards at stations to incorrectly show trains as delayed
or cancelled.