A member of the Energy Committee of the Iranian Parliament claimed that the cyber attack on Iran's fuel supply system was carried out “from inside.”
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Parviz Mohammadnezhad Ghazimahalleh said on Thursday that the the attack which cut off 70% of the country's petrol stations was a “physical” one. “They entered the system via a USB or a program from inside,” he added without specifying the identities of the people involved.
On Monday, the cyberattack which crippled gas stations across Iran was claimed by the hacking group "Gonjeshk-e-Darande" or Predatory Sparrow which announced the attack on X, claiming that they took out “a majority of the gas pumps throughout Iran.”
Iran accuses “Gonjeshk-e-Darande” of having links to Israel. The group rose to prominence as a hacktivist two years ago for a similar cyberattack on fuel distribution centers across Iran on the eve of the second anniversary of the bloody suppression of the November 2019 protests. In a separate incident, they claimed responsibility for hacking the state railway company.
The remarks came a day after Hadi Beigi-Nezhad, another member of the Energy Commission of Iran’s parliament, said a cyber virus had infected the fuel system, attributing it to an individual and a network that had infiltrated the country.
Tejarat News, an economic news website, announced on Thursday that the majority of gas stations in Tehran province have been reconnected to the online distribution system.
Out of a total of 330 gas stations in the province, 239 are now connected to the national fuel system, Tejarat News quoted a local official as saying.
Also on Thursday, Morteza Mahmoudvand, another Iranian lawmaker, blamed “Zionists” and Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad for the fuel system attack and urged “an equilibrium of fear” in order to fight what he called the country’s enemies.
Equilibrium of fear means doing to them what they do to us, added Mahmoudvand, who is a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian parliament. ■
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