TIRANA, September 26 – Albania’s historic decision to sever diplomatic relations with Iran in September, following the massive cyber attacks against that Balkan country began with a high-level investigation, Prime Minister Edi Rama declared in an interview with the US newspaper The Washington Post.
The FBI and a team from Microsoft worked with foreign and Albanian experts to identify four separate hacker groups that the Iranian government is known to sponsor, particularly outside of its Ministry of Secret Services.
“One of them was among the 10 biggest cyber-terrorist groups, whose traces have also been discovered after the attacks on Saudi Arabia, Israel and so on,” said Rama.
“The July hackers aimed at disrupting government services. Some 95 percent of such services in Albania have moved to online availability as long queues previously forced some people to wait months for licenses and certificates,” Rama said.
“Based on the investigations, the scale of the attack was such that the goal behind it was the complete destruction of our infrastructure to take us to the age of paper (documents) and at the same time, the disappearance of all our data,” Prime Minister Rama said.
A group calling itself “Homeland Justice” claimed responsibility for the attack, having Albania as target because it hosts members of the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Their number is more than 3000 persons and they reside in a special place in the suburbs of Durres
Iran has denied responsibility for the attack and condemned Albania’s reaction.
/Argumentum.al
