“Hired hackers launched a cyberattack against Iran's infrastructures – the biggest attack in the country’s history,” Deputy ICT minister, Hamid Fattahi, wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday.
He added that the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack disrupted internet services in Iran for an hour, but it was soon repelled by Iran’s Digital Fortress.
Reportedly, spoofed source IPs from East Asia and North America were used in the DDoS attack.
IP spoofing is the creation of Internet Protocol packets that have a modified source address to either hide the identity of the sender, to impersonate another computer system, or both.
A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.
Internet watchdog website NetBlocks confirmed the disruption on Twitter, posting, “Internet partially shut down #Iran from 11:45 a.m. local time; real-time network data show national connectivity fell to 75% after authorities reportedly activated ‘Digital Fortress’ isolation mechanism.”
Over the past few months, Iranian officials have cautioned that the frequency and intensity of cyberattacks against Iran have surged. In December 2019, a major cyberattack was reported by the Iranian government.
Digital Fortress aims to protect citizens’ privacy, deter cyberattacks on infrastructure, help sustain digital services, combat data breaches and online fraud, as well as detect malware in the network and stop its spread.
MNA/4848113