Massive Power Cut Brings Turkey To Stop : Iran Cyber Attack

Turkey is in process of recovering from a major power cut that brought the country almost to a stop. According to some media reports from Turkey almost the entire country was affected by the massive power cut. Officials are considering the possibility that they were hit by a major cyber attack that was directed at its critical infrastructure.
 

The Turkish government is currently presenting the power cut as technical issue but some suspect that a state sponsor could have authorized this massive cyber attack against Ankaras electric grid and other features of its critical infrastructure.

Turkish officials said that the issue stems from technical problem with the computer system of the Turkish Electricity Conduction Company which is responsible for controlling power lines.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated that every possibility including a terrorist attack is being investigated.

Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz added that officials were investigating whether the power outage was result of a cyber attack. The energy minister said: «I also cannot say whether or not there was a cyber attack. The most important thing for us is to bring the system back to life. This is not something we frequently experience. »

If officials do determine that Turkey was hit by major cyber attack, Iran will likely be seen as primary suspect.

The power cut happened as tensions increasingly rise between Iran and Turkey over past few weeks. Although it takes time to determine attribution from a cyber attack some news outlets report that authorities are highly suspicious that Iran has supported the attack.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said condemning the Shiite regime: «Iran is trying to chase [the Islamic State] from the region only to take its place». Turkish president also condemned Iran for aiding «terrorist groups» in taking over Yemen. The remarks that reportedly angered Iranian government officials who demanded an apology from Turkey. 

The two countries have also had major falling out in diplomatic relations due to the Syrian civil war. While Iran is strong supporter of the Assad regime Turkey fiercely opposes Assads grip on Syria. The countries also find themselves on opposite sides about the current conflict in Yemen.

Iran dedicated major resources towards expanding its cyber warfare capabilities over past few years.

Some speculated that Iran became one of the number one cyber threats such as China and Russia. Iran was once considered a D-grade cyber threat. Now its almost on the same level as Russia or China.

Iran also showed that it has the ability to breach the United States critical infrastructure network where Iran infiltrated U.S. water, gas, and transit systems while also successfully breaching airport security networks.

In February Irans Ayatollah Khamenei said in an address to his military cyber units: «You are the cyber war agents… get yourselves ready for such war wholeheartedly. »

« Operation Spider » by IRGC attacks alleged cyber criminals

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran has spread widely in its fight against cyber crime by following up individuals with social media pages for alleged cultural misdeeds. But in the Islamic Republics war against what it sees as anti Iranian Islamic activities, the regime could be losing the fight.

On Saturday 30 January 2015 Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Center for Investigation of Organized Cyber Crimes made statement in the media about a recent operation on social networks in particular Facebook.

According to the statement IRGC was able to «identify and arrest some of the most important elements and active social networks on the Internet that have a mission to spread corruption and diminish the Iranian-Islamic way of life and targeting the holy institution of the family. »

The statement said that « this network by abusing the domain of the Internet and hidden and indirect support of Western governments » was able to create 350 Facebook pages in two years. Their activities allegedly included:

«Proliferation of the culture of a hedonistic lifestyle, weaken the foundations and negating the institution of the family, mock religious beliefs and values, spread relations outside of moral codes, spread personal images of young girls – which creates conflicts in families and possibly of their disintegration, abusing youths and adolescents, including girls and boys and production and distribution of immoral and anti-religious material in the form of tabloid and popular content on social network Facebook. » Some of those people affected by IRGC centres operation alleged earned «illegitimate income» through their activities.

Cyber crime can take variety of forms and is not unique to Iran and it affects nearly every society with Internet access. But IRGCs Center for Investigation of Organised Cyber Crimes seems to have spread widely in this operation by arresting individuals for activities which in many contexts are not be considered as crimes. This is in part because the IRGC and more broadly Iranian hardliners see such activities as being part of soft war carried out by hostile foreign governments and their Iranian facilitators.

Soft war is not just regime rhetoric but is seen by some people as national security concern and has received massive funding. Cyber space which is a key domain for the spread of ideas is seen as key domain for the broad cast of content which can advanced the perceived soft war against Iran. This is why Iran has not only one but several organizations for oversight of cyber space including FATA police unit which appears to perform the same function as the IRGC Center for Investigation of Organised Cyber Crimes even in relatively more open and transparent fashion. Yet as said in the past when it comes to fighting the soft war the regime only seems to be capable of successfully employment of hard tools such as cyber filtering regime and arrests and interrogations. What the regime appears to be incapable of successfully employing is soft tools to attract Iranians back toward the Islamic Republics vision of Iranian Islamic culture instead of only trying to deter consumption of Western culture.