September 13-2013
Iran’s cyber police have accused the United States of attacking the website of Iran’s Oil Ministry back in April 2012, the Fars news agency reported.
More than a year has passed since the attacks on the website, which made it unavailable for several hours.
General Kamal Hadyanfar, head of Iran’s cyber police, told Fars security measures had to be taken as some foreign users were cut off from the website. He also said security experts found a virus on the website, and managed to neutralize it.
“The investigation revealed that the attacks were made from the US, and the Iranian side immediately sent a letter to the US government asking it to provide detailed information about the attackers,” Hadyanfar said. He said the US government refused to give out the information for security reasons, arguing that the information was confidential.
He didn’t say what US government agency Iran had communicated with or provide the text of the letter he said was sent in response.
It is easy to trace such attacks back to the server they came from. But that trace does not tell whether the attack originated in the country where the server was based or originated somewhere else and was diverted through a foreign server to obscure the origin.
But Hadyanfar went further and said the United States government was itself behind the attack, although he did not explain how he could know that.
He said Iran should consider the US refusal to help as a basis for appealing to international courts and to Interpol. He didn’t say how a refusal by the US government to give the Islamic Republic information was a basis for prosecution.
He also did not say if Iran has ever provided the United States with any information on the many cyber attacks US officials say they believe originated in Iran.
Hadyanfar said the attackers stole some general information from the website. However, he said, security measures allowed Iran to protect sensitive databases from the attack. He didn’t say why the Oil Ministry kept anything sensitive on a public website.
The cyber police chief also said that before the presidential election of June 14, there were several intense hacker attacks carried out on some Iranian news portals, none of which he identified.