TEHRAN: Iran has foiled a cyber attack on its central bank, the country’s telecommunications infrastructure company said on Friday.

Anonymous and other global hacking groups threatened in October to launch cyber attacks on Iranian institutions and officials in support of anti-government protests and to bypass internet censorship there.

Amir Mohammadzadeh Laje­v­ardi, head of the Infra­structure Comm­unications Company, said the central bank was targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Thursday night, the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. DDoS attacks attempt to cripple servers by overwhelming them with internet traffic.

“These days, the largest volume of foreign attacks is against banks and financial institutions, internet providers and communications infr­astructures, which have been repelled,” Lajevardi said. The central bank said in Sep­tember that a cyber attack briefly took its website offline.

Internet access has been severely limited in Iran since widespread protests erupted over the death in mid-September of a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, while in police custody over enforcement of mandatory dress code laws.

Published in Dawn, january 7th, 2023