Iranian ISPs in normal condition after Friday cyber attack

'Tonight some Iranian data centers were targeted by a cyber attack,' Minister of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi said in a Twitter message late on Friday.

Investigations show that the attacks covered wide areas inside the country, Mahdi Mousavi, an expert in Maher institute told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Saturday.

In the wake of the recent cyber attack, Iranian internet providers Afranet, Shatel and Sabanet went haywire.

Attempts have been made to control the attacks with cooperation of main ISPs in the country, and the data centers that were attacked, returned to normal condition, he added.

The attack aimed at damaging Cisco Systems, he said adding that Iran was also damaged in this regard.

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in San Jose, California, in the center of Silicon Valley, that develops, manufactures and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment and other high-technology services and products. Through its numerous acquired subsidiaries, such as OpenDNS, WebEx, Jabber and Jasper, Cisco specializes into specific tech markets, such as Internet of Things (IoT), domain security and energy management.

According to Maher statement, the attacks included Cisco's router and switching equipment, which has been tampered and all the configurations (including running-config and startup-config) have been removed.

A message with this theme was found in the startup-config format, which is the cause of the problem, and the existence of a security vulnerability in the Cisco Smart Install Client feature, and any operating system that has this feature shows its vulnerability, the statement read.

Based on the preliminary investigations, hackers put the US flag in navigation systems to show protests against US elections and attacks wre not limited to Iran, Azari Jahromi said.

The Iranian ICT minister also said that over 95% of navigation systems were fixed to normal mode.

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