Iran Denies Involvement In Cyberattacks On Gulf Oil Companies
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Iranian officials on Sunday denied any role in recent cyberattacks on Persian Gulf oil and gas companies; and claimed that the American allegations had been “politically motivated”, particularly ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
Iranian officials on Sunday denied any role in recent cyberattacks on Persian Gulf oil and gas companies; and claimed that the American allegations had been “politically motivated”, particularly ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
Last week, a former U.S. State Department official, James Lewis, had informed the press that American officials had “more than a suspicion” that the recent “shamoon virus”, which caused ten of thousands of computers at Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco and Qatari natual gas firm Rasgas, had been orchestrated by Iranian hackers.
Lewis, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, also said that it was implausible that the Iranian government was not involved, given the scale of the cyber operation, which had erased critical files from the affected companies.
[quote]“How could you do something that consumed a massive amount of bandwidth in Iran and not have the government notice, when it’s monitoring the Internet for political purposes?” he asked, as cited by AFP.[/quote]“There’s generally a conviction that it was Iran,” he said.
later in the day, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also appeared to make a veiled threat towards Iran, warning that the U.S. was ready to response in the event of a cyberattack.
The Pentagon chief spoke of “foreign actors” probing sensitive US networks and cited denial of service attacks on some large US financial companies in recent weeks.
[quote]“Potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests,” Panetta said in a speech in New York City to the Business Executives for National Security.[/quote]“He (Panetta) came as close to fingering Iran for some of the disruptions we’ve seen in the last month as you could do without actually saying it by name,” told Lewis to AFP.
However, the director of Iran’s National Center of Cyberspace, Mehdi Akhavan Beh-Abadi, told a press conference on Sunday that the U.S. allegations had no technical basis, but rather “we interpret this issue politically and in light of domestic issues and election in the United States.”
Commenting on Panetta’s statement that the United States has the capacity to identify the origin of the cyber attacks, he stated, as cited by the Tehran Times, “We welcome those remarks and announce readiness for any kind of international cooperation to identify the origin of these attacks. However, we believe that such remarks are more of a scenario.”
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The cyberattacks on Aramco and Rasgas have been described as “the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.”
Panetta made it clear that he intends to avoid what he calls a “Cyber Pearl Harbour” in the U.S. at all costs, while warning business executives that warned that Iran’s abilities were growing.
