TEHRAN: A group claiming to be from Iran hacked a U.S. government website on Saturday night, which comes as tensions between the United States and Iran reached new heights after the U.S. killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, which is a designated terrorist organization.
The Spectator Index tweeted out a screenshot of the way that the Federal Depository Library Program appeared during the hack.
BREAKING: The US government’s Federal Depository Library Program website has been hacked by an Iranian group. pic.twitter.com/uKbG9f3oVn
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) January 5, 2020
Politico reported on Saturday that in recent years Iranian hackers “have wiped the computer servers of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, crippled a Las Vegas casino [owned by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson], breached the networks of dozens of U.S. banks and been accused of trying to meddle in the 2020 presidential election.”
“Tehran is widely considered to be one of the world’s most malicious online actors — alongside China, Russia and North Korea — and has a lengthy rap sheet of transgressions with an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of digital weapons,” Politico added.
One of its specialties is the so-called wiper attacks, in which malicious software erases the hard drives of infected computers. Those include a massive 2012 hack on the Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco that is reported to have debilitated an estimated 30,000 computers.
FOX 5 reporter Lauren DeMarco tweeted, “Right now: Working to learn more but the Federal Depository Library Program website appears to have been hacked by someone claiming to be from Iran.”
(Agencies)
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