TEHRAN -- Iran’s president said Wednesday that a cyberattack which paralyzed every gas station in the Islamic Republic was designed to get “people angry by creating disorder and disruption”.
Ebrahim Raisi’s remarks stopped short of assigning blame for the attack, which rendered useless the government-issued electronic cards that many Iranians use to buy subsidized fuel at the pump.
However, they suggested that he and others believe anti-Iranian forces carried out an assault likely designed to inflame the country as the second anniversary of foreign-backed riots over gasoline prices approaches.
“There should be serious readiness in the field of cyberwar and related bodies should not allow the enemy to follow their ominous aims to make problem in trend of people’s life,” Raisi said. National television later aired footage of the president visiting a gas station in central Tehran.
On Wednesday morning, the official IRNA news agency quoted another official who said 80% of Iran’s gas stations had begun selling fuel again.
Abolhassan Firouzabadi, the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, linked the attack to the Iran’s rail system assault in July in comments reported by IRNA.
“There is a possibility that the attack, like a previous one on railway system, has been conducted from abroad,” Firouzabadi said.
A previously unheard-of group claimed responsibility for the cyberattack hours afterward late Tuesday, in a message on the messaging app Telegram. It did not provide any evidence that it carried out the assault.
Officials at the ministry of petroleum said the cyberattack disrupted only sales with smart cards used for cheaper rationed gasoline, and clients could still buy fuel at higher rates. However, the scale of the aggression suggested it was not the work of an individual or a small group.
“The attacks were so widespread that all 4,300 gas stations in the country were disrupted,” Firouzabadi said.
In the past, the United States and the occupying regime of Israel have been implicated beyond doubt in a series of cyber terrorism against the Islamic Republic.
The two regimes are widely believed to have developed Stuxnet discovered in 2010 after it was used to attack a uranium enrichment facility in Iran in the first publicly known example of cyber terrorism by using a computer virus to attack industrial machinery.
Firouzabadi said the results of an investigation into the origin of the attack on Iran’s refueling systems will be announced in the next 7-10 days.
“It is possible that this attack, like the cyberattack on the railway systems of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was carried out from abroad,” he said.
“Although this cyberattack has been contained now, it has caused a lot of problems and we hope that all fuel stations will return to normal tomorrow.”
Firouzabadi said similar attacks had been carried out three or four times in the past, but since the timing was in the early morning hours, the disruption had been fixed before the start of the day.
“But this time, the disruption in the fuel distribution system occurred in the noon, which created problems,” he added.
Firouzabadi said fuel sales with smart cards are specific to Iran, which requires officials in the banking, communications, refueling and transportation sectors to pay special attention to the security of the systems.
Cheap gasoline is considered a birthright by many Iranians in a country which is home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves, with the government providing subsidized petrol to motorists.
Subsidies allow Iranians to buy regular gasoline at 15,000 rials per liter or 5 cents a liter. Each motorist with a smart card is provided a monthly ration of 60 liters. For non-subsidized gasoline, they have to pay 30,000 rials a liter or 10 cents a liter. By comparison, regular gasoline costs 89 cents a liter on average in the United States.
Javad Owji, the country’s oil minister, told IRIB that authorities expected all gas stations to be back online by Wednesday afternoon. He added that specialists were working on bolstering security for the fuel cards.