DREAM / The Prime Minister resigns and wakes up under the Parisian bridge!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

From Israel to Albania, Iran's cyber war has gone global

2022-09-17 18:21:04Fokus SHKRUAR NGA THE ECONOMIST
From Israel to Albania, Iran's cyber war has gone global
From Israel to Albania, Iran's cyber war has gone global

From The Economist

Iranian diplomats inside their embassy in Tirana, Albania, gathered the important documents and set them on fire in the early hours of September 8. They were in a hurry, the day before they were given 24 hours to escape. A few hours later, the local police cleared the premises. The episode was the height of the drama caused by an earlier cyber attack by Iran, again focusing on the country's role in the maelstrom of cyber conflicts.

In late July, bomb threats and cyber attacks forced members of the Mujahideen Organization of Iran, known as the MEK, an Iranian opposition cult, to cancel a planned summit in Albania, where 3,000 MEK members live.

The MEK has been opposed by Iran, not least for their support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and has been sanctioned by some American and European politicians. Although America and the EU no longer consider it a terrorist organization as it once did, Iran continues to see the group as a threat. Last year, an Iranian diplomat in Vienna was convicted by a Belgian court of attempting to bomb another MEK organization.

On July 15, Iran made a jagged attack on Albania's networks. It affected the online pages of the parliament, the prime minister and the one that provided state services. Part of the attack was to hold data hostage until the required payment was made, the other part was to steal messages with sensitive content. Emails between Prime Minister Edi Rama and his foreign counterparts were published. Although the attackers were dismissed as a disgruntled Albanian group, Albania, America and Britain say Iran was responsible.

From Israel to Albania, Iran's cyber war has gone global

On September 7, Rama said he would sever diplomatic ties with Iran. "This extreme response," he said, "is appropriate for the risk of a cyber attack that threatened to paralyze public services, wipe out digital systems, hack state information and cause chaos and insecurity in the country." It is the first time that a country has severed diplomatic relations due to a cyber aggression with another country.

It was "an extremely brazen operation," said Mandiant, a US cyber security firm, pointing to the fact that Albania is a member of NATO, whose mutual defense clause in Article 5 covers not only major cyber attacks. , but also smaller ones.

"This may indicate an increased tolerance for risk when using disruptive tools against countries perceived to be working against Iranian interests," Mandiant concluded. On September 9, Iran struck again, Albania said, this time against the country's border control systems. On the same day, the US government imposed sanctions on Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, a spy agency, for its "increasingly aggressive cyber activities" since 2007.

Iran's cyber attacks against Albania do not compare to the ongoing clashes with Israel. The two countries are fierce rivals, fighting over Iran's nuclear program, which is expanding rapidly once again, along with the activities of Iran-backed armed groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. This encounter is often violent and also, increasingly, digital.

In 2020, Iranian hackers attempted to disable 6 water service facilities in Israel. The answer came quickly; a cyber attack on the port of Shahid Rajaee, in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran. Then in 2021, a group of hackers known as "birds of prey," said to be from Israel, disrupted Iran's rail network and the country's fuel distribution system, displayed anti-regime propaganda on electronic billboards, and revealed views from Evin prison, where political prisoners are housed. The attacks continued this summer as well.

On June 18, cyber attacks from Iran set off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and Eilat, Israel's southern port. Attacks that showed critical systems were compromised. A week later, the "birds" attacked Celik power plants in Iran and took control of the machines there, a network attack that created physical destruction. In the same month, several actors, again suspected to be from Iran, hacked a tourist company, obtaining information on more than 300,000 Israelis. On September 6, an Israeli court jailed Omri Goten, a former employee at the home of Benny Gantz, Israel's defense minister, for collaborating with Iranian hackers.

"Some of the most interesting developments in cyberspace in recent years have not occurred between Russia and Ukraine," says a Western official, "but between Israel and Iran."

Taken together, these sabotage, subversion, and propaganda campaigns are some of the most aggressive types of competition between states conducted over computer networks to date. While the fate of Iran's nuclear plans has yet to be decided, the aggressiveness of the race is unlikely to abate.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×