[Jpost] Iran calls cyberattack claims 'baseless' after Albania severs ties.
The US condemned the Iranian cyberattack against Albania, a NATO ally, warning that it would take action to hold Iran accountable.
Albania is ending its diplomatic relations with Iran and has ordered Iranian diplomats and embassy staff to leave within 24 hours, after an investigation into a cyberattack in July found Iran was responsible, Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Wednesday. Iran has called the claims "baseless."
“The government has decided with immediate effect to end diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Rama said in a video statement sent to the media.
“This extreme response... is fully proportionate to the gravity and risk of the cyberattack that threatened to paralyze public services, erase digital systems and hack into state records, steal government intranet electronic communication and stir chaos and insecurity in the country,” Rama said.
RAMA SAYS IRANIAN ATTACK AIMED TO DESTROY ALBANIA'S DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
According to Rama, Iran attacked Albanian government sites in an attempt to “destroy it, paralyze public services and hack data and electronic communications from the government systems.”
Last month, cybersecurity firm Mandiant estimated that the July attack was conducted by Iran, though Russia was a likely suspect, as noted by a number of US media outlets. The US strongly condemned the cyberattack.
The report by Mandiant noted that “the use of ransomware to conduct a politically motivated disruptive operation against the government websites and citizen services of a NATO member state in the same week an Iranian opposition groups’ conference was set to take place would be a notably brazen operation by Iran-nexus threat actors.”
Mandiant theorized that the attack indicates that Iran “may feel less restraint in conducting cyber network attack operations going forward” and may have “an increased tolerance of risk” when conducting cyberattacks.
Thorough investigations have been conducted to make sure that no irreversible damage was done and to identify the hackers, Rama added. All of the systems are backed up and running.
The attack, which occurred on July 15, was not “an individual operation or concerted action by criminal groups, but a State-sponsored attack,” Rama said, adding that this information matched intelligence from Albanian cybersecurity firms.
“The in-depth investigation provided us with indisputable evidence that the cyberattack against our country was orchestrated and sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Rama said. “It was through the engagements of four groups that enacted the aggression – one of them being a notorious international cyberterrorism group, which has been a perpetrator or co-perpetrator of earlier cyberattacks targeting Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait and Cyprus.”
Rama added that Albania updated NATO with all the information it has.
IRAN SLAMS DECISION TO SEVER TIES
The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the move by Albania, saying it considered "this country's decision to sever political relations with our country based on such baseless claims to be an ill-considered and short-sighted action in international relations."
The Foreign Ministry claimed that Iran has "principled positions" in cyberspace in multilateral and international forums and is itself targeted by cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.
The ministry also pointed a finger at the US and Israel, stating that "the immediate release of the American government's statement and the reception of this decision by the Zionist media indicate the existence of a prepared plan to create a political atmosphere against the Islamic Republic of Iran."
US CONDEMNS ATTACK, CALLS FOR ACTION AGAINST IRAN
The US National Security Council in a statement on Wednesday condemned the Iranian cyberattack against Albania, calling for Iran to be held accountable for “this unprecedented cyber incident.”l
NSC Spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, “The United States will take further action to hold Iran accountable for actions that threaten the security of a US ally and set a troubling precedent for cyberspace.”
The NSC added that the US government has been working on the ground with private-sector partners to help Albania mitigate, recover from and investigate the attack.
“Iran’s conduct disregards norms of responsible peacetime state behavior in cyberspace, which includes a norm on refraining from damaging critical infrastructure that provides services to the public,” said Watson. “Malicious cyber activity by a state that intentionally damages critical infrastructure or otherwise impairs its use and operation to provide services to the public can have cascading domestic, regional, and global effects; pose an elevated risk of harm to the population; and may lead to escalation and conflict.”
[SHAFAQ] The families of the missing persons in Nineveh seemed to disagree with the notion of covering the pit and they took social media to express their discontent.The pit is a deep geological crater south of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , and one of the mass graves used by ISIS to hide the bodies of its victims, i.e., hundreds of civilians and security personnel executed by the terrorist organization during its control over Mosul.
Shafaq News Agency learned that the "pit," which ISIS had previously attempted to replenish but failed due to its size, remained open long after the governorate was liberated in 2017, but was forbidden access to by security personnel controlling the area."
According to a security source, "In 2018, a delegation from Baghdad specialized in mass graves arrived, visited the pit, and was surprised that it was partially backfilled; the delegation prepared a detailed report discussing the89 matter and submitted it to Baghdad, to keep the case pending until this day."
According to the source, "There were no ISIS faceless myrmidons in the governorate when the pit was partially backfilled because Nineveh had been entirely liberated. The security units in control of the territory at the time should be held accountable for what happened."
According to human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... organizations, reports from the areas surrounding the pit indicate that ISIS has been executing dozens of people every day for years, and the number of missing victims in it is believed to be in the thousands, making it the largest mass grave in Iraq, if not the world.
Activist Sami al-Faisal confirmed that they have frequently demanded that the pit be excavated, "however, we have received no response from the local or central governments."
He added that "the official in charge of the mass graves informed him of the difficulty of excavating the pit because it requires great international efforts."
Thousands of families of missing victims are still waiting for the remains of their relatives who were killed by ISIS during its seizure of Mosul in 2014.
Fattah Ahmed told Shafaq News Agency that he and his family are looking for his brother, a security guard whom ISIS holy warriors apprehended after the city was invaded. Nearly a year later, ISIS revealed lists of the names of the 2,070 persons it executed and dumped in the pit.
Ahmed added that those were the first disclosed lists after only one year, but ISIS also executed thousands after that, and only a few of the bodies were handed over to their families, "Many more were likely buried in the pit, as nowhere else can accommodate such large numbers of bodies in Mosul."
For his part, Nineveh MP Shirawan al-Dobardani stated that Nineveh deputies intend to launch an investigation to determine the facts surrounding the backfilling of the pit and who carried it out.
MP al-Dobardani confirmed his refusal to "backfill the pit, in which thousands of Nineveh deaders were buried," and stated his intention to "launch an urgent investigation to find out who attempted to erase the traces of this crime and deny the heroism of Nineveh's deaders and their patriotic positions against ISIS."
"We have been demanding the excavation of the pit for years, but the government has refused under the pretext that it requires a massive international effort," he said, emphasizing that Nineveh MPs "will never allow backfilling the pit because it is a crime against those who rejected ISIS, and thus it is a blurring of the terrorist organization's crimes against the people of the governorate."
The number of missing people in Nineveh is reported to be around 6,000. On the other hand, the Martyrs Foundation in Mosul reported that it has asked the families of the missing to work on finalizing their sons' papers to declare them "deaders".
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
a delegation from Baghdad specialized in mass graves
This grave diggers' union ghastly,
arrives in their hearses steadfastly,
to give you a tip on how not to gip,
while digging for a hundred and fastly.
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