An Iranian member of parliament confirmed the recent hacking operation against government institutions and industrial centers in spite of the regime playing down the degree of compromise its systems underwent.
Hossein Jalali said: "Today, hackers enter the systems...steal our information and cause sabotage in some centers such as factories, organizations, and petrochemical facilities."
Advocating stronger preventive action, he added: “We must note that hackers enter any organization which is available; so, we have to see what the countries that are not attacked by hackers are doing. Hackers have not yet succeeded in penetrating China's systems. That’s because China has a national internet, so Iran's Internet should become like China."
The member of the Cultural Commission of the Iranian parliament also added that the hackers set some facilities on fire.
The hacktivist group ‘Uprising till Overthrow' claimed on May 29 that it breached 120 servers at the presidential office, getting access to internal communications, meetings minutes, President Ebrahim Raisi’s online conference platforms and about 1,300 computers inside the office.
In the cyberattack, the group is said to have gained access to “tens of thousands of confidential documents” but is releasing them in daily batches.
Earlier in May, the group, affiliated with the Albania-based opposition Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) group -- People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, hacked into the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry servers, disabling 210 sites and online services and leaking another large batch of documents.
The US on Friday sanctioned Iran-based tech firm Arvan Cloud, its co-founders, and an affiliate UAE-based company over helping the regime censor the Internet in Iran.
The Iranian government has regularly used Internet restrictions and the throttling of Internet speeds to suppress dissent, surveil and punish Iranians for exercising their freedom of expression and assembly both online and offline.
