Iran Speaks of 2nd Cyberattack in Less than Week

Iranian Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi says the Islamic Republic has faced a cyberattack for the second time in a week. Unlike the previous attack, he said, this was “aimed at spying on government intelligence” efforts. Taking to Twitter, Azari Jahromi said the servers used “were identified and the hackers were also tracked.” Last Wednesday, he said the cyberattack had been aimed at “e-government infrastructure,” which generally means internet-based forms and applications used by citizens to do government business through state-owned portals. Iran has faced cyberattacks in the past, most notably with the so-called Stuxnet virus, said to have been launched jointly by the United States and Israel to infect computers Tehran was using to control centrifuges involved in its nuclear research program.