Cyberattack halted the production at the Iranian state-owned Khuzestan Steel company

Iranian state-owned Khuzestan Steel Company was hit by a cyber attack that forced the company to halt its production.

The Khuzestan Steel Company is one of the major steel companies owned by the Iranian government. The company was forced to halt production due to a cyberattack.

According to the Associated Press, Khuzestan Steel Company has a monopoly on steel production in Iran along with two other major state-owned firms.

The website of the company is still down at the time of this writing.

The company was forced to halt production to avoid damage to the production lines and impact on the supply chains it belongs to.

The Iranian news channel Jamaran reported that the attack failed because at the time of the attack an electricity outage had interrupted the operations at the plant.

“Fortunately with time and awareness, the attack was unsuccessful,” reported the Irania Mehr news agency quoting Ebrahimi.

Local authorities expect the operation will be restored by the end of Monday. Threat actors likely aimed at impacting the steel industry. Iran is one of the major producers of steel in the Middle East and among the top 10 in the world, according to the World Steel Association

The government of Teheran, nor the Khuzestan Steel Company, has attributed the attack to a specific threat actor.

In the last couple of years, Iranian infrastructures were hit by several cyber attacks.

In October 2021, a cyber attack disrupted gas stations from the state-owned National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) across Iran. The attack also defaced the screens at the gas pumps and gas price billboards.

In July, the Iranian railroad system was hit by a cyberattack, threat actors published fake messages about delays or cancellations of the trains on display boards at stations across the country, the Fars news agency reported.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Khuzestan Steel Company)

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