Iran-Saudi tensions erupt in ‘cyberwar’
Iran-Saudi tensions erupt in ‘cyberwar’ – In mid-May, Gen Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Civil Defence Organisation, said he saw the …
When Iran’s top civil defence official said his country was preparing for major cyber-attacks from Saudi Arabia, perhaps even he did not think it would take such a short time for his warnings to become reality.
In mid-May, Gen Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Civil Defence Organisation, said he saw the mainly Sunni kingdom as his chief threat in the coming year.
Mainly Shia Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been regional rivals but tensions worsened dramatically last year, partly because of the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
Within days of Gen Jalali’s remarks, Iranian and Saudi hackers were attacking websites in each other’s countries in what Iranian media called “all-out cyberwar”.
On 25 May, a self-proclaimed hacker from Saudi Arabia calling himself “Da3s” apparently attacked the websites of Iran’s Statistical Centre and Registration Office, defacing the homepages with a photo of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who fought an eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s.
Many Iranian media sources thought the hacker had misspelled his name and that the attack was the work of the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State – widely known in the Middle East by its Arabic acronym, “Daesh”.
The Saudi hacker said on Twitter – where he identified himself as Salman al-Harbi – that he was not a member of the militant group, and that Da3s was the correct spelling of his nickname.
Since the Stuxnet computer worm hit Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2010, the country has invested heavily in cyber capabilities and set up a team of trained hackers known as the Iranian Cyber-Army.
Saudi Arabia has also stepped up its investment in cybersecurity in the past year in efforts spearheaded by its National Centre for Cyber-Security.
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