UN and law enforcement agencies targeted by pro-Iran hackers

An Iraqi member of a pro-Iran hacking collective claimed to have attacked United Nations and international law enforcement organizations’ websites today.

While many of the site attacks reported by pro-Iran hackers since the start of the conflict have been focused on Israel and Gulf nations allied with the United States, the Islamic Cyber ​​Resistance in Iraq – 313 Team has extended many of its claimed cyber intrusions outside of the region including the government of Romania — deemed “legitimate targets” because the country approved a request by the U.S. to use the country’s bases for refueling planes and equipment for surveillance and satellite communications — and Microsoft services.

On Tuesday, the group claimed to have targeted and disrupted the Saudi Press Agency website and internal servers at the Saudi National Data Bank.

The 313 Team said in Telegram post that they conducted “a massive cyberattack targeting 60 IP addresses of Saudi government servers.”

“The attack resulted in the shutdown of over 70% of Saudi government websites (note that there are subdomains of the main sites which we will not name; if we were to list them, the number of affected sites would exceed 100),” the statement said. “The attack will continue for several days, and we will make the Saudi government servers taste the same bitterness we inflicted on the Kuwaiti government servers.”

This evening, 313 Team said it targeted the websites of INTERPOL and Europol with a “precise cyberattack” and posted check-host.net screenshots as evidence of sites outages.

The group then said it targeted the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office for one-hour website shutdowns, and posted screenshots of time-out errors for each site.

All of the sites were accessible when tested at the time this article was written except for the latest claimed target of the 313 Team: the Spanish National Police. The Iraqi hacking group said it would keep the site down for an hour.

READ MORE: The risk for cyber or U.S. critical infrastructure attacks in Iran conflict

This was later followed by claims to have attacked the websites of the Portuguese Criminal Investigation Police, the Austrian Federal Police and the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism.

The Cyber Islamic Resistance collective announced today that the Cyb3r Drag0nz Team, a Kurdish group that claimed an attack last year on the website of Iraq’s mission to the United Nations yet earlier this month “decided to withdraw from the coalition of the Islamic Cyber ​​Front due to the continuous attacks of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Kurdistan territory and attacks on Kurdish forces,” would be a collaborative partner as “we will not allow anyone to divide us.”

“We agreed to strengthen cooperation and coordination between our formations, and exchange intelligence information about any attempts to undermine the stability of the region and destabilize security,” Cyber Islamic Resistance resistance said in the statement accompanied by images of Iranian and Kurdish flags that was also posted on the Cyb3r Drag0nz Telegram channel.

“A cyber security solution for the Islamic resistance,” Cyb3r Drag0nz replied.

This article was updated at 12 p.m. on March 26 with additional law enforcement organizations targeted