TIRANA — Albania has suffered a renewed cyberattack, the
country’s interior ministry said on Saturday, blaming Iran which Tirana also
accused of an earlier assault on its digital systems.
اضافة اعلان
“The national police’s computer systems were hit
Friday by a cyberattack which, according to initial information, was committed
by the same actors who in July attacked the country’s public and government
service systems,” the ministry said in a statement.
“In order to neutralize the criminal act and secure
the systems,” the authorities have shut down computer control systems at
seaports, airports and border posts, the statement said.
In a tweet, Prime Minister
Edi Rama denounced
“another cyberattack (committed by) the same aggressors already condemned by
Albania’s friendly countries and allies.”
Albania blamed Iran for the July attack and on
Wednesday cut diplomatic ties over the affair.
The two countries have been bitter foes for years,
since the Balkan state began hosting members of the opposition People’s
Mujahedeen of Iran, or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), on its soil.
Rama on Wednesday accused Iran of directing a
cyberattack against Albanian institutions on July 15 in a bid to “paralyse
public services and hack data and electronic communications from the government
systems”.
It was the first time Tirana spoke about the alleged
attack.
“The Council of Ministers has decided on the
severance of diplomatic relations with the
Islamic Republic of Iran with
immediate effect,” said Rama.
“The said attack failed its purpose. Damages may be
considered minimal compared to the goals of the aggressor. All systems came
back fully operational and there was no irreversible wiping of data.”
The prime minister went on to say that Iranian
diplomats and embassy staff had 24 hours to leave the country.
Iranian denials
Iran rejected the accusation
it was behind the cyberattack as “baseless” and called Albania’s decision to
sever diplomatic ties “an ill-considered and short-sighted action”.
“Iran as one of the target countries of cyberattacks
on its critical infrastructure rejects and condemns any use of cyber space as a
tool to attack the critical infrastructure of other countries,” its foreign
ministry said.
The US announced sanctions Friday on Iran’s Ministry
of Intelligence and Security and its minister Esmail Khatib over Tehran’s
alleged involvement.
The Islamic republic has also been targeted by
cyberattacks, most notably in 2010 when the Stuxnet virus — believed to have
been engineered by Israel and the US — infected its nuclear program.
Albania agreed in 2013 to take in members of the MEK
at the request of Washington and the
United Nations, with thousands settling in
the Balkan country over the years.
Following the collapse of its communist government
in the early 1990s, Albania has transformed into a steadfast ally of the United
States and the West, officially joining NATO in 2009.
The MEK backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the
1979 revolution that ousted the shah but rapidly fell out with the new Islamic
authorities and embarked on a decades-long campaign to overthrow the regime.
The MEK regularly hosts summits in Albania that have
long attracted support from conservative US Republicans, including former vice
president Mike Pence, who delivered a keynote address at an event in June.
A month later, the group postponed another summit citing
unspecified security threats targeting the event.
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