CAIRO — A cyberattack disrupted gasoline stations throughout Iran on Tuesday, a number of state-run Iranian information companies reported, leaving the authorities and gas distributors scrambling to revive service.
The assault, which led to lengthy strains exterior gasoline stations for a lot of the day, got here shortly earlier than the anniversary of the November 2019 antigovernment protests that erupted over gas value will increase.
The Iranian authorities, who’ve been embarrassed repeatedly prior to now by cyberattacks that they blamed on america and Israel, mentioned they had been investigating the episode, state media reported.
Abolhassan Firoozabadi, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Our on-line world, informed state tv on Tuesday night that the assault was most certainly carried out by a “overseas nation,” although he didn’t title one.
The disruption, he mentioned, “had the traits of a cyberattack.”
Officers had been quoted by state-run information companies as saying that solely the mechanism for getting gasoline with sponsored gas playing cards had been affected, and that drivers might nonetheless refuel at a better, unsubsidized price.
However most Iranians, squeezed by an financial system that has suffered underneath mismanagement, corruption and American sanctions, rely on sponsored gasoline.
Not solely the pumps could have been hacked. Pictures on social media confirmed digital billboards in Tehran, the capital, and Isfahan, one other main Iranian metropolis, displaying the message, “Khamenei, the place is our gas?” The query appeared to confer with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme chief, maybe suggesting a political motivation for the assault.
The semiofficial ISNA information company reported earlier Tuesday that different billboards in Isfahan had displayed the phrases “Free gas in Jamaran gasoline station,” an obvious reference to the Tehran neighborhood that was dwelling to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s authentic supreme chief. It additionally reported that drivers attempting to pay for gas acquired error messages studying “cyberattack 64411,” the identical quantity as a hotline in Mr. Khamenei’s workplace.
Inside minutes, nevertheless, ISNA’s protection of the hacked billboards had disappeared, a not-uncommon prevalence that typically signifies that the authorities have disapproved of a report. An hour later, ISNA claimed that the sooner report had been written by hackers.
Iran has been the goal of a sequence of cyberattacks over current years, some directed at its nuclear program, together with an American and Israeli marketing campaign in opposition to one of many nation’s uranium enrichment amenities between 2009 and 2010. Others, just like the one which brought about havoc in Iran’s railway system in July, are aimed toward its infrastructure.
The July assault stood out as a result of researchers concluded it had been carried out not by a rival authorities however by an unbiased group referred to as Indra, named after the Hindu god of battle, which seems to be against the Iranian authorities. In that assault, too, hacked digital messages bore the quantity 64411.