[BreachExchange] A cyber attack hit a port on Strait of Hormuz, Iran said

[Destry Winant]

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/103088/cyber-warfare-2/iran-strait-hormuz-port-cyberattack.html

Iran ‘s officials revealed that hackers compromised and damaged a
small number of computers at the port of Shahid Rajaei in the city of
Bandar Abbas.

Iranian officials announced on sunday that hackers damaged a small
number of systems at the port of Shahid Rajaei in the city of Bandar
Abbas.

Bandar Abbas is the capital of Hormozgān Province on the southern
coast of Iran, on the Persian Gulf. The city occupies a strategic
position on the narrow Strait of Hormuz, and it is the location of the
main base of the Iranian Navy. Bandar Abbas is also the capital and
largest city of Bandar Abbas County.

Iranian officials did not reveal details of the cyber attack that took
place last week.

Local authorities, including the Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO)
in the state of Hormozgan, confirmed that operations at the port were
impacted by the cyber attack.

Initially, officials denied the cyber-attack, but due to media
pressure that later admitted the cyber intrusion.

Speaking to ILNA news agency, the Managing Director of Ports and
Maritime Organization revealed that the cyber-attack failed to
penetrate the Ports and Maritime Organization’s systems (PMO). The
Managing Director explained that the attackers were able to compromise
only a limited number of computers at the ports.

“The organization is well protected, but still needs to continuously
strengthen and update the layers of protection to minimize the risk of
a cyber-attack,” he added.

The authorities did not attribute the attack to a specific threat
actor, Iran’s Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development stated
that he did not have any information about the origin of the attack.

“Currently, the distribution of cargo in northern ports is good;
although the performance of all southern ports is negative.” Mohammad
Rastad.

In the same hours an apparently unrelated incident took place in the
same area, The Iranian support ship Konarak was hit by a new anti-ship
missile being tested by the frigate Jamaran during an exercise on
Sunday.

The Konarak had been putting targets out in the water and remained too
close to one, according to the reports. Nineteen sailors have been
killed and 15 others injured in the incident.

Local media speculated that the two incidents could have been linked,
for this reason, Iranian authorities decided to disclose the cyber
attacks and officially explain that the two incidents were not
related.

In December 2020, the New York Times revealed that the US carried out
a cyberattack in June on a database used by Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps to plot attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf.

The attack took place on June 20, 2020, the US hackers had interfered
with the cyber capabilities of Iran’s paramilitary arm to target the
shipping in the Gulf. The database was used by Iran Guards to choose
the tankers to target.

In December 2019, Iran foiled two massive cyber-attacks in less than a
week, the country’s telecommunications minister Mohammad Javad
Azari-Jahromi revealed.

The news was reported by both the ISNA and Mehr news agencies, the
Iranian minister defined the attacks as “really massive” and
attributed them to a nation-state actor.