Iran’s railroad system was hit by a cyberattack, hackers posted fake delay messages

Iran’s railroad system was hit by a cyberattack, hackers posted fake messages about delays or cancellations of the trains on display boards at stations across the country.

Iran’s railroad system was hit by a cyberattack, threat actors published fake messages about delays or cancellations of the trains on display boards at stations across the country, the Fars news agency reported.

The messages on the boards informed passengers that the trains were “long delayed because of cyberattack” or “canceled.” The messages also urged passengers to call for information and provided the phone number of the office of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The cyber attack led to “unprecedented chaos” at rail stations in the country. The Fars agency attempted to downplay the effects of the attack and pointed out that it did not cause disruption.

“Fars later removed its report and instead quoted the spokesman of the state railway company, Sadegh Sekri, as saying “the disruption” did not cause any problem for train services.” reported ABC News.

At the time of this writing, it is still unclear who is behind the attack, no one claimed responsibility for the attack.

This isn’t the only problem faced by the railroad system in the country, earlier in the day, trains across the country had lost their electronic tracking system. The authorities are investigating both events, but it is not clear if they are linked.

Iranian critical infrastructure is under constant attack, nation-state actors attempted to compromise them several times.

In October 2020, Iran’s cybersecurity authority revealed that two governmental departments were hit by cyberattacks.

In December 2019, the Iran telecommunications minister announced for two times in a week to have foiled a cyber attack against its infrastructure.

At the time, the Iranian minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi confirmed that the attack was neutralized by the national cyber shield, it also added that the attack was launched by the China-linked APT27 group seeking for gathering intelligence its country.

In October 2019, Iran announced it was fearing retaliation from Western countries that are accusing it to carry out physical and cyber attacks against their infrastructure and countries in the Middle East.

At the time, Iran’s oil ministry said that the Government of Washington has launched a full-scale economic war” against the Islamic Republic in retaliation for the shooting down of a US drone as well as attacks on oil tankers that the US has blamed Iran.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, railroad system)

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