The United Kingdom (UK) Parliament appears to have been hacked by Iran. The cyber-attack on 23 June 2017 was a brute-force attack against 9000 email accounts including the UK Prime Minister Theresa May and in total between 30 to 90 members of Parliament.
The UK Times newspaper which broke the story, said that it was Iran’s first significant act of cyber-warfare on the UK and underlines its emergence as one of the world’s biggest cyber powers and that Iran is highly capable of such attacks.
The decision to publish the information now is interesting, coming after the US President Donald Trump's intent to withdraw from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) against Iran, which could threaten to re-instate sanctions against Iran. The UK, France and Germany do not agree with the USA on the matter. Without complete agreement, perhaps Iran will not suffer from any new sanctions against it, as it appears that Iran has not violated any of the sanctions.
Iranian regime attack or amateur hackers?
The attack, which was suspected of being originally from Russia, may have been carried out by amateur hackers. At the time of the attack in June, it was said that the attackers could only break into the email accounts of members of Parliament (MPs) which had simple, easy to hack passwords. As a security response at the time, MPs were unable to access their accounts and had to communicate using SMS texts instead. It now seems, however, that the regime may perhaps have after all been behind the attack?
Reasons for the attack
The reasons for the attack are unknown (or at least the British Intelligence services are not saying), but could be:
- Exploratory activities: Iran may have been looking for UK data that Iran could then force the UK to make concessions with, or that could compromise the interests of the UK
- Iran may have been looking for a trade advantage
- More worryingly is the possibility that the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) may be seeking to undermine Iran's anti-nuclear proliferation deal in order to get it scrapped; Iran could then restart its nuclear weapons research.
The IRGC are at odds with President Hassan Rouhani, who they see as being too pro-West and the religious leader of the regime, Ayatollah Khamenei is linked with the IRGC, so there is an ongoing rift between the religious and political leadership of Iran, partly due to Rouhani slashing the IRGC's budget to restrict their economic activities.
An uncertain future
In my previous article, it is possible that Iran may seek to increase cyber-attacks against the USA if the US walked away from the JCPOA. Now that President Trump appears to be doing that, even if Germany, UK and France don't agree, we may see an increase in the cyber war from Iran against the West.
