Iran oil company blames cyberattack on China, Israel

Iran says it has successfully blocked a cyberattack on the computer network of its offshore drilling platforms, which it accuses of being launched by China and Israel.

Mohammad Reza Golshani, IT head of Iran's state offshore oil company told the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) on Monday the attack had caused one-way telephone connections to the platforms and the whole company but the information, communication and technology (ICT) unit had managed to nullify the attack.

The main network was safe as it was isolated from the Internet and was back to normal operations, he noted in the article.
The attack was planned and operated mainly by Israel and China, over the past two weeks, but it had also been traced to other locations as well, Golshani remarked. 

This is not the first time Iran has been targetted by a cyberattack. Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges were hit by Stuxnet in 2010, which they believed was planted by Israel or the United States. The country is also moving to a domestic Internet system, which it says would improve cybersecurity.

Iran itself has been fingered as a source of cyberattacks. Hacker group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters took responsibility for the denial of service (DoS) attacks on major U.S. banks last month. However, U.S. senator Joe Lieberman believes the attacks were state-sponsored by Iran, citing "the increasingly strong economic sanctions that the United States and our European allies have put on Iranian financial institutions" as the cause.