A sophisticated hacking group linked to Israel claimed responsibility on Sunday for carrying out a cyberattack that disrupted a significant portion of Iran’s gas stations.
The group known as Predatory Sparrow wrote in a statement to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the attack had knocked out “a majority of the gas pumps throughout Iran” and that it came “in response to the aggression of the Islamic Republic and its proxies in the region.”
“Khamenei, playing with fire has a price,” the post added, referring to Iran’s supreme leader.
Iran’s oil minister, Javad Owji, told Iranian state TV that as many as 70% of the country’s gas stations had been disrupted in the incident, which is the second time in the past two years that Predatory Sparrow has disrupted gasoline supplies in Iran. An Israeli government spokesperson declined to comment on the incident during a Monday briefing.
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Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a flurry of hacktivist groups on both sides of the conflict have attempted to take down and deface websites, but operations linked to the conflict have been mostly opportunistic and exaggerated in impact. Sunday’s incident in Iran appears to be the first cyberattack since the current round of fighting began to have major physical consequences.
The attack comes against the backdrop of growing tensions in the Middle East as fighting continues between Israel and Hamas. Iranian-backed Houthi fighters have in recent weeks carried out a string of attacks targeting commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, prompting some major oil producers israel linked hacking group claims attack iranian pumps
