The email servers of one of the subsidiaries of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) was hacked. The hacking was confirmed after the stolen data was published online, as per BleepingComputer.
Black Reward Takes Responsibility for the Breach
According to AEOI, the agency was hacked from a foreign country. However, "Black Reward," an Iranian hacking group, has claimed responsibility for the breach.
In a statement published on Twitter, the hacking group claimed that they had released the hacked information relating to Iranian nuclear activities.
According to the group, they hacked the agency as an act of support for the protesters in Iran, as per Reuters.
The group stole emails from the hacked server. The emails consisted of daily correspondence and technical memos.
The energy agency said that the IT group serving the Bushehr power plant has checked the incident and issued a report on the breach.
All involved parties and officials were informed of the incident. They have been warned to be ready for potential exploitation attempts.
Likewise, necessary preventive measures were taken by the agency to mitigate the results of the incident.
No sensitive information was exposed, according to the energy agency. AEOI said the hackers conducted the breach to gain the attention of the public and media. Likewise, the group wants to smear the image of the agency to the public.
"It is obvious that the purpose of such illegal efforts, which are carried out of desperation, is to attract public attention, create media atmospheres, and psychological operations, and lack any other value," reads the machine-translated AEOI statement, as cited by BleepingComputer.
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Black Reward Hacks AEOI in Support of the Protesters
The email hack was a part of a "nation-state cyberespionage," according to AEOI.
But Black Reward group took responsibility of the attack. According to the group, they did the breach to support of the ongoing nationwide protests. There is an ongoing protest in Iran because of the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
"In the name of Mahsa Amini and for women, life, freedom," the group ended their statement last Saturday.
The government's morality police have taken Amini into custody for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. She eventually died in police custody, and it led to violent clashes between demonstrators and authorities over the last few weeks.
Upon hacking, Black Reward threatened the energy agency that they would release the hacked information in 24 hours if the authorities do not release the political prisoners and people arrested during the recent unrest.
The management schedule as well as the operational schedules of AEOI were part of the information leaked by Black Reward.
Likewise, the data on passport and visas of Iranian and Russian experts working in the power plant, as well as the financial receipts were also part of the leaked data, the group claimed.
Moreover, the group said that the leaked information also include agreements with local and foreign organizations.
Link where the leaked data can be downloaded was posted on the group's Telegram channel. It was posted on Sunday.
According to Black Reward, the information contains the 27GB 14-part collection of RAR archives containing 85,000 email messages.
According to the hackers, the leak only contain valuable content as they already removed marketing messages and spammed emails.
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