Iran's railway network has been severely disrupted in what state media described as "unprecedented chaos" due to a suspected cyberattack . As Reuters reported on July 9 , the country's railway network experienced delays and cancellations as ticket offices struggled to cope with the alleged attack.
However, those behind this action not only caused serious operational problems, but trolled Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been in office since 1989.
IRIB reported that electronic boards used to display arrival and departure information to passengers at train stations have been hacked.
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Iranian officials from the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development confirmed the malicious activity on July 10.
Specifically, the Ministry stated the following in its relevant announcement: "Following an outage of the personnel computer systems at the headquarters of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, the issue is under investigation by technical experts of the ministry."
Additionally, the railway service's site appears to be operating normally at present.
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This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. In April, the UK's Merseyrail network was hit by a cyberattack carried out by the gang Lockbit ransomware. According to reports, an Office 365 email account used by the company was compromised, and was also used to inform employees and journalists about the attack.
The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has been informed of the incident.
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In 2018, Rail Europe also fell victim to a cyberattack that lasted three months. This attack resulted in the theft of payment card data and customer personal information. The malicious actors who carried it out were able to install credit card-skimming malware on the network's site.
Information source: zdnet.com
