Data Centers running in Iran were hacked by a cyber group on Friday last week. The cyber crooks claimed themselves to be from the United States as they displayed a message along with the US Flag on some hacked server screens saying “Do not mess with our elections”. But researchers from Cisco Talos confirm that the attack was not specific to a country and was aimed solely at its switches.
The Iranian data companies which were seriously affected by the attack are Respina, ISIRAN, and Shuttle.
According to a report released to a media resource by Cisco Talos, over 200,000 Cisco Switches fell victim to the attack. And from them, 35,000 were being operated in Iranian data centers, 55,000 in the server farms of the United States and 14,000 in China. Other victims of Cisco switches which took the cyber attack impact include those operating in data centers located in Europe and India.
Cisco announced that as the switches weren’t updated with latest security patches to the company’s legacy Smart Install Protocol, they easily became a victim to attackers.
Iranian IT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said that the damage could be minimal as the flaw was rectified and contained within a couple of hours. No data loss is said to have occurred during the incident.
On why the screens were displaying US Flag? The Iranian Minister said that the issue was still under probe and so he cannot reveal much of the details as of now.
A source from Cisco Talos said that the attack could be a mischief of a hacking group who doesn’t belong to the any of the attacked countries. The source added that it could be the work of a diversion gang who wanted to pose as the hackers from the US and attack all developed nations.
More details will be updated shortly!
