On Monday, July 26, Sky News revealed five classified documents that contain the Iranian regime’s plans to attack the important infrastructures of Western countries, including the UK, France and the United States.
Although there have been reports of such cyberattacks by the Iranian regime and other governments in the past, it is unusual for the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards’(IRGC) classified documents to be leaked to the Western media.
According to the report, some of the possible attacks planned by the IRGC cyber troops are attacks on “ballast tanks” of cargo ships. This can cause irreparable damage to the ship and even cause it to sink.
The report states that another plan of the Iranian regime seems to be to hack the automatic fuel gauge tank of certain gas stations, which could stop the flow of gasoline, or in the worst case, even cause an explosion.
In addition, the 57 pages of evidence obtained display attempts to hack maritime communications.
Another unnamed source told Sky News that the documents described only the early stages of planning for cyberattacks, but did not specify how far those plans had gone.
The European Union has been diplomatically cold-blooded to the Iranian regime since the discovery of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps terrorist operation in Europe, but at the same time, it has not retaliated against the Islamic Republic.
Ben Wallace, Britain’s defense secretary, said the Iranian documents – if authentic – demonstrate how vulnerable the UK and its allies are to cyber-attacks. “Unless we do something about it, our critical national infrastructure, our way of life could be threatened quite easily,” he told Sky News.
Asked how much of a threat Iran poses in cyberspace, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the top military officer overseeing UK cyber operations, said: “They are among the most advanced cyber actors. We take their capabilities seriously. We don’t overstate it. They are a serious actor and they have behaved really irresponsibly in the past.”
Source: Sky News
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