TEHRAN - A senior civil defense official says the large-scale cyberattack that recently targeted Iran’s infrastructure probably originated from the U.S.

On February 8, the Iranian internet service suffered hours of disruption in what telecoms authorities said was the result of DDoS cyberattack that was dealt with swiftly. 

The “powerful” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused users to experience connection issues, according to officials.

“Since Americans failed to give a military response to our recent shootdown of their unmanned aerial vehicle in the Iranian waters as well as our missile attack on Ain al-Assad base [in Iraq], they are responding to our country through continued economic pressure and cyberattacks,” Civil Defense Organization chief Jalali says.Now Gholam-Reza Jalali, the head of Civil Defense Organization, says the unsuccessful DDoS attack probably originated from the U.S. 

“It’s very difficult and time-consuming to trace the source of a cyberattack. The Telecommunication Infrastructure Company is currently studying and looking for the source of the recent cyberattack against the country … but our analysis is that America was the origin,” Jalali said in a televised interview on Thursday night, Press TV reported.

“The Americans’ cyberattack has been foiled by our cyber defense unit,” he said, but at the same time warned that the attack might have been carried out to study the feasibility of a bigger attack.

“Since Americans failed to give a military response to our recent shootdown of their unmanned aerial vehicle in the Iranian waters as well as our missile attack on Ain al-Assad base [in Iraq], they are responding to our country through continued economic pressure and cyberattacks,” Jalali remarked.

“We have managed to control their cyberattacks, and they have failed to damage any section,” Jalali said, adding, however, that Iran must accelerate its efforts to launch its national information network in a bid to maintain services in case of bigger attacks.

Although the February 8 DDoS attack was dealt with immediately using the Iranian Information Technology Fortress, known as DEJFA, it still affected several service providers in Iran, including two notable mobile operators.

DDoS attackers normally use hijacked or virus-infected computers to target websites. During such attacks, websites become unreachable after an unusually large number of requests for information are sent to them, causing the servers that host them to fail.

Iran had previously reported cyberattacks sponsored by the United States and the Israeli regime that have targeted its key information infrastructure.

DDoS attacks in September targeted Iranian websites that were involved in cryptocurrency trade. Authorities said those attacks were 20 times more powerful than similar attacks in other countries.