Iran’s ministry confirmed that the country’s Ministry of Petroleum and a number of affiliated companies were hit with a malware attack on Sunday resulting in several product equipment at several locations, including the Kharg Island, was taken offline on precaution basis. The Mehr News Agency, reported Monday that the country’s principal oil terminal on Kharg Island was disconnected from the Internet as part of the response to the attacks. Email systems associated with the targets were also pulled offline.
A Ministry of Petroleum spokesman acknowledged the attacks, but said “critical servers at the reported targets” — the ministry, Iran’s national oil company and Kharg Island — were not affected because they are isolated from the Internet. The ministry spokesman also said that the malware, which he did not identify, resulted in the theft of some user information from websites and some minor damage to data stored on the web servers although according to the ministry, no data was actually lost because backups were available.
