Iran Denies Cyber Attack Allegations Against US Officials

The spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry reacted to reports of cyber attacks by 'Iranian hackers' on the accounts of US officials, stating that the Islamic Republic has 'never responded to illegal attacks with cyber retaliation.' According to the state news agency IRNA, Hossein Jaberi Ansari emphasized that Iran has itself been a 'victim of serious cyber attacks such as Stuxnet' in recent years. He noted that from the perspective of the Islamic Republic, the 'lack of an effective international legal system' to prevent such attacks is 'one of the serious deficiencies' in this area. The New York Times reported on December 3 that 'Iranian hackers' had carried out several cyber attacks against the accounts of US State Department officials in recent months. Two weeks prior, Reuters had reported on European officials' actions against 'a cyber espionage group' that 'may be linked to the Revolutionary Guard.' Meanwhile, the American newspaper Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, November 4, linked the hacking of emails and personal pages of 'several officials in the US State Department' to the arrest of Siamak Namazi, the director of strategic planning for the Crescent oil company, in Tehran. On Thursday, April 27, the French news agency reported that a joint investigation by the American Enterprise Institute and the private cybersecurity firm North indicated that Iran's cyber capabilities had increased following the Stuxnet cyber attack. In 2010, the Stuxnet computer virus temporarily disrupted the activities of thousands of centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. In recent years, some government organizations, including the Central Bank and the Ministry of Oil of Iran, have also faced cyber attacks. In this context, the 'discovery' of spyware in hotels where nuclear negotiations took place, Kaspersky expert: Malware operators did not work on Saturdays, the second major cyber attack on the US in a week, Iranian state hackers 'have become more skilled,' espionage by 'possibly Iranian' hackers on LinkedIn, Wall Street Journal: Cyber attack by the Revolutionary Guard on the US State Department, changing the battlefield for 'proxy wars'; war against the people in the streets of Iran.