DUBAI, UAE – On Sunday, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization claimed that hackers acting on behalf of an unidentified foreign country infiltrated a subsidiary’s network and gained unrestricted access to its email server.
An unnamed hacking group claimed to be behind the attack on Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, calling on Tehran to release political prisoners detained during recent nationwide protests. The group claimed to have obtained 50 gigabytes of private emails, contracts, and construction plans for Iran’s Russian-backed Bushehr nuclear power plant. It was uncertain whether the compromised system contained sensitive information.
The hack arises as Iran continues to suffer widespread unrest, which was sparked by the death on Sept. 16 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman in police detention for supposedly failing to follow the state’s strict Islamic dress code. Iran’s top teachers’ union reported on Sunday that sit-ins had decided to cancel classes at a number of schools throughout the country in protest of the government’s clampdown on protesting students.
The protests began in response to Iran’s mandatory hijab, or headscarf, for women, but quickly evolved to become one of the most significant problems to the country’s ruling clerics. Protesters have confronted police and even called for the Islamic Republic’s demise. According to estimates, security forces used live ammunition as well as tear gas to disperse protests, killing over 200 people.
Hackers broke into the email system of the company that runs the country’s sole nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr, according to Iran’s civil nuclear arm.
The agency tried to blame the attack on a “foreign country,” but did not elaborate. Iran has repeatedly accused the US and Israel of carrying out cyberattacks on the infrastructure of the country.
“Such unauthorised efforts are executed out of desperation in order to attract public attention,” according to the organization.
An unidentified hacking group that calls itself “Black Reward” publicly released what appeared to be pictures of contractual agreements, plans, as well as equipment at the Bushehr plant, that also went online with Russia’s assistance over a decade ago.
“As with Westerners, we don’t mingle with felonious mullahs,” the group wrote on its Telegram channel, declaring the hack.
In the meantime, the Coordination Council for Teachers Union, Iran’s top teachers’ union which has been outspoken in the demonstrations, disclosed that schools, primarily in Iran’s Kurdish provinces, obeyed a call to abandon classes on Sunday in protest of student deaths as well as detentions in the previous month of unrest. Authorities made no instantaneous affirmation of the strikes.
Teachers in the Kurdish cities of Sanandaj, Marivan, Kermanshah, and Saqez, as well as in West Azerbaijan and the mountainous Hamadan provinces, were photographed holding protest signs reading “Woman, Life, Freedom” and other slogans instead of teaching.
“Schools have turned into barracks, and tear gas is being flung in the faces of schoolchildren,” one teacher stated in a letter distributed by the union. “History will remember this courageous generation.”
