TEHRAN – Communication and Information Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi announced on Wednesday that Iran has foiled a very big organized cyberattack on its electronic infrastructure.

Azari Jahromi said the cyberattack was launched by a foreign government.

“We recently faced a highly organized and state-sponsored attack on our e-government infrastructure which was...repelled by the country’s security shield,” Azari Jahromi told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

The major attack was repelled by the security shield known as the Dejfa firewall, the minister added, according to Tasnim.

“It was a very big attack,” Azari-Jahromi said, adding that details would be revealed later.

U.S. officials told Reuters in October that the United States had carried out a secret cyber strike on Iran after the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities, which Washington and Riyadh claimed Iran was responsible for. 

In a post on his Twitter account back in June, Azari Jahromi said Iran had managed to thwart about 33 million cyber-attacks against its sensitive sites last year (March 2018-March 2019).

“Last year, we neutralized not a single strike but 33 million attacks with the Dejfa firewall,” he wrote, stressing that the U.S. tries hard but has not carried out a successful attack.

Back in October, head of the Civil Defense Organization Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali said Iran is taking legal action against the U.S. over repeated cyberattack attempts and threats, while it is putting in place robust security measures to protect its vital infrastructure. 

“The Americans have repeatedly threatened and mounted cyberattacks against us,” Jalali told Tasnim.

MH/PA