One of Iran's largest steel companies said on Monday it was forced to shut down production after it suffered a cyberattack that also targeted two other factories in the country, in one of the largest such attacks on the Islamic Republic's strategic industrial sector.
An anonymous hacker group has claimed responsibility for the attack via social media, saying it was directed against Iran's three largest steel companies in response to "the aggression of the Islamic Republic."
“These companies are under international sanctions and continue to operate despite the restrictions imposed,” the group said, citing its ties to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
A steel plant in the central Iranian city of Mobarak said its system was also attacked, while the state-run IRAN newspaper reported that another plant in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas was the target of a cyberattack. None of the factories acknowledged any damage or work stoppages as a result.
Meanwhile, Khouzestan Steel Co. said the plant had to suspend operations until further notice "due to technical issues" following the "cyber attacks". The company's website was down on Monday.
However, local news channel Jamaran reported that the attack failed because the factory was out of service at the time due to a power outage.
In recent years, cyberattacks in Iran have become more common. The country, long under Western sanctions, has slowly upgraded its networks to counter the growing use of ransomware by criminals, as well as government intrusions.
Earlier this month, a hacktivist group called "Rise to Overthrow" hacked and deactivated more than 5,000 surveillance cameras and 150 websites and online services of the Tehran Municipality. Some of them have not yet resumed work.
Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, principal threat researcher at SentinelOne, said it is still unclear who is behind the recent cyberattacks against Iran. But he said it was an escalation if the same groups were behind the alleged attack on the industrial control system of steel mills.
Earlier, Iran accused the US and Israel of cyber attacks that damaged the country's infrastructure.
Iran cut off much of its government infrastructure from the Internet after the Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint creation of the US and Israel, disabled thousands of Iranian centrifuges at the country's nuclear facilities in the late 2000s.
The government considers the metallurgical industry to be a critical sector of Iran's economy. According to the World Steel Association, Iran is the leading steel producer in the Middle East and one of the ten largest steel producers in the world. Its iron ore mines provide raw materials for domestic production and are exported to dozens of countries, including Italy, China and the United Arab Emirates.
However, Iran's crude steel production totaled just 2.3 million tons last month, according to the WSA. The concomitant drop in exports is largely due to sanctions-hit Russia luring Iranian buyers to China with discounted steel after losing access to Western markets due to the war with Ukraine.
