IRAN NEWS ECONOMIC DESK

TEHRAN – Deputy Minister of Roads and Transportation and Head of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO) says some of Iran’s port operators have come under cyberattacks whose sources were abroad.

Speaking in a press conference and responding for recent halt in container operations of Rajaee Port, Mohammad Rastad said that some port operations in the country have come under cyberattack whose sources were abroad. He went on to say that but the officials could manage it and no ship faced delay in loading or unloading and everything is now normal.

He further said that since the outbreak of the Coronavirus in the country, loading and unloading in the ports have not come to a halt and since March 20 and beginning of the new year, ports in the country have had 19m times of loading and unloading which shows 35.8 percent decrease comparing to the same period last year, and expressed hope everything would become normal and national trade can compensate this lag very soon.

Rastad added that since the beginning of 2020, world economy has been affected by the virus and marine transportation is not an exception, either, because it is part of global economy.

He said the global order for building vessels and ship has nosedived, adding that the order for building ship has fallen by 71 percent.

He further said the price of renting a ship was once $35,000 per day but because of the pandemic, the price has slumped to even lower than $5,000 in the first quarter of the year.

Rastad reiterated that the pandemic had the most negative impact on marine tourism than marine trade and all marine voyages have almost halted in the country.

He said despite observing all sanitary protocols, the number of marine passengers in the country has decreased by 97 percent this year.

On the amount of basic goods in the ports, he said some 4.154m tons of basic goods are currently in the ports, of which over 3m tons are at Imam Khomeini Port.

Rastad added that currently 25 ship have berthed at ports while they are unloading their cargos which weigh around 588,782 tons and 23 more ship are waiting to berth whose cargo weighs some 1.7m tons.

He further said corn, wheat, barley, soya, oil seed and rice are of the major commodities in the ports.

He stated the total government and non-government investment in the national commercial ports till the end of last year was around 158,000b rials as the most investment has been at Imam Khomeini Port.

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Some media had claimed on Saturday that a number of Iranian servers and websites, including petrochemical firms, have come cyber-attacks.

following of the article,this is one of the successful cyber-attack in history:

Robert Tappan Morris and the Morris Worm (1988):

Creator of the first computer worm transmitted through the Internet, Morris, a student at Cornell Univeristy in the USA, claimed it his progeny was not aimed to harm but was made for the innocuous intent to determine the vastness of the cyberspace.

Things went pear-shaped when a the worm encountered a critical error and morphed into a virus which replicated rapidly and began infecting other computers resulting in denial of service. The damage? 6000 computers were reportedly affected causing an estimated $10-$100 million dollars in repair bills.

While this event could be pinned as being an unfortunate accident, it no doubt played a part in inspiring the calamitous distributed denial-of-service (DdoS) type of attacks we see today.

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On Thursday, American sources claimed that the United States had targeted computer systems that control Iranian rocket and missile launchers.

The attacks came shortly after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) shot down a U.S. Navy RQ-4A global Hawk drone that had entered Iranian airspace in the Persian Gulf region to gather intelligence, using the indigenous Khordad 3 surface-to-air missile system.

“We have been facing cyber-terrorism for a long time…Last year we neutralized 33 million attacks with the (national) firewall,” Jahromi was quoted by Press TV as saying.

Iran’s past calendar year ended on March 20, 2019.

U.S. sources reveal that that American intelligence and military officers are working on clandestine plans against the Islamic Republic.

Citing unnamed current and former U.S. government officials, the New York Times said in a report on Sunday that the plans pushed by the White House are designed to develop new options, including in cyberspace, to counter the Islamic Republic without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war.

According to the officials, the White House has told military and intelligence officials it now also wants options in line with the kind of operations conducted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), including the downing of the intruding U.S. spy drone.

They did not provide further details about the secret operations under consideration by the White House, the report said.

The Times, however, said they could include a wide range of activities such as additional cyber-attacks, secret operations aimed at disabling speedboats used by the IRGC and covert operations inside Iran aimed at fomenting more unrest.

The IRGC Navy is well-known for the speedboats it operates in the Persian Gulf, which it has used to successfully contain foreign ships and aircraft carriers around the key Strait of Hormuz in the past.

The American officials said Washington might also look for ways to divide or undermine the effectiveness of Iran-allied groups in the region.

Pointing to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s longstanding covert plans against Iran, the officials said that senior American officials have discussed with the White House options for expanded clandestine operations by the spy agency, as well as plans to step up existing efforts against Tehran.

One former American officer said there was a range of options that the Pentagon and the CIA could pursue to potentially keep Iran off balance but that would not have “crystal-clear attribution” to the United States.

The U.S. has been escalating tensions with Iran under President Donald Trump.

Leading a signature policy of “maximum pressure,” the U.S. quit a United Nations-ratified nuclear agreement between Iran and six world states. It then proceeded to restore the sanctions that had been lifted under the deal.

Washington has, in addition, sent an aircraft carrier strike group, a bomber task force, an amphibious assault ship, and some 1,500 more forces to the region over the past weeks.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon approved deployment of an extra 1,000 reinforcements. Two days later, the Pentagon also said it was dispatching more Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, and aircraft to the Middle East alongside the reinforcements.

The U.S. has cited, what it calls alleged intention by Iran to target the American interests in the region for the alarming escalation. Tehran has rejected harboring any such malevolence, warning that the region cannot take another conflict as a result of Washington’s reckless measures.

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IRAN NEWS NATIONAL DESK

He said the cyber defense project of the country with a budget of 50b tomans has come on stream to identify cyber attacks.

He added that in the past two years, several cyber attacks on the national country have been identified and thwarted, adding the figure has been less than 50 million attacks. He went on to say that by designing the defense system, they could boost its cyber defensive power by 30 times. Adding that last year, over 33m cyber attacks were identified and thwarted in the national network.

He went on to say an indigenous firewall has been installed on the country’s industrial control systems under the Siemens brand to repel cyber attacks.

He told reporters that the country has succeeded in developing its own firewall to counter cyber attacks.

“The indigenous firewall is currently installed on all industrial control systems operating under the Siemens brand,” he said.

Industrial control system is the integration of hardware and software with network connectivity in order to support critical infrastructure.

Jahromi stressed that the firewall will soon become compatible with all other industrial control system brands in the country.

He reminded that the malicious computer worm ‘Stuxnet’, which is believed to be made by the US and Israel and used in the past to target the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program, had infected computers that were connected to the country’s industrial facilities, adding “therefore, the firewall can be installed on industrial control and management systems and recognize the given commands.”

In an Instagram post on Thursday, the ICT minister had said the firewall has been designed and developed by young Iranian scientists, and successfully tested on industrial automation systems.

The firewall “practically neutralizes industrial [acts of] sabotage, such as [those potentially launched by] Stuxnet, in electrical grids and suchlike,” he wrote, adding, “By relying on [our] youths, we will turn threats into opportunities.”

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“The recent remarks by the U.S. secretary of state showed that they have maintained their cyber tools against us and have said that they will use them if necessary,” Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali said, Mehr reported.

Jalali made the remarks in a meeting with Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian in Tehran on Wednesday, as the two sides discussed U.S. threats against Iran in energy fields.

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