Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Cyber Attackers Disrupt Internet in Iran

Cyber attackers have targeted Iranian infrastructure and communications companies, disrupting the Internet across the country, a state official was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

Iran, the world’s No. 5 oil exporter, has tightened cyber security since its uranium enrichment centrifuges were hit in 2010 by the Stuxnet computer worm, which Tehran believes was planted by arch-adversaries Israel or the United States.

“Yesterday we had a heavy attack against the country’s infrastructure and communications companies which has forced us to limit the Internet,” Mehdi Akhavan Behabadi, secretary of the High Council of Cyberspace, told the Iranian Labour News Agency.

“Presently we have constant cyber attacks in the country. Yesterday an attack with a traffic of several gigabytes hit the Internet infrastructure, which caused an unwanted slowness in the country’s Internet,” he said.

“All of these attacks have been organised. And they have in mind the country’s nuclear, oil, and information networks.”

Israeli officials have threatened military action against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy sites if Western sanctions on Tehran’s banking and oil sectors do not persuade it to shelve its disputed atomic programme.

Western powers suspect Iran is trying to develop the means to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran says it is enriching uranium only for civilian energy.

Last month a commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said it was prepared to defend itself in case of a “cyber war” and deemed it more dangerous than a physical confrontation.

Iranian authorities said in April that a computer virus was detected inside the control systems of Kharg Island – which handles the vast majority of Iran’s crude oil exports – but the terminal remained operational.

Iran maintains one of the world’s largest Internet filters, blocking access to tens of thousands of websites on the grounds that they are criminal or immoral. Sites expressing anti-government views are routinely barred.

Many of the Internet restrictions date back to the use of sites such as Facebook and YouTube to rally and publicize mass anti-government protests that erupted after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranian riot police clashed on Wednesday with demonstrators and foreign exchange dealers in Tehran over the collapse of the country’s currency, which has lost a third of its value against the dollar in a week, witnesses said.

Police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who shouted slogans against Ahmadinejad, saying his economic policies had caused the currency crisis.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.