In Iran, drivers have a card to access subsidized gasoline at gas stations. The cyberattack disabled the system that reads them.
A cyberattack today paralyzed gas stations in Iran by disabling the digital fuel purchasing system, causing long lines at the country’s service stations.
Drivers’ fuel cards stopped working across Iran mid-morning as a result of the cyberattack, a situation that dragged on for hours.
After several contradictory versions by the authorities, Iranian state television cited sources from the Supreme National Security Council to describe the stoppage as a “cyber attack”, without giving further details.
The Petroleum Ministry, for its part, reported that due to “a technical problem in the fuel smart card system, the use of the cards has been interrupted throughout the country.”
In Iran, drivers have a card to access subsidized gasoline at gas stations.
The ministry organized an “emergency meeting” to resolve the “technical problem”, but also did not offer more information on the reasons for the failure of the users’ cards.
At a service station in the Jordan neighborhood of Tehran, Efe found that the outage lasted hours and that a long line of vehicles had formed. ”The system has not worked for an hour. I don’t know why, ”the person in charge of the gas station explained to Efe.
Do not go to gas stations
Faced with this situation, the spokesman for the Energy Commission of the Iranian Parliament, Mostafá Najaí, asked drivers not to go to gas stations.
“There is no need to worry. I ask people not to go to the gas stations for now if they don’t have to. The problem will be solved soon,” Najaí said.
After several hours without service, the gas stations began to recover, according to the National Petroleum Products Distribution Company of Iran (NIOPDC), which sent technicians to the gas stations to deactivate the smart card system.
“40% of gas stations across the country have resumed service,” NIOPDC spokeswoman Fateme Kahí told state news agency IRNA. “At these stations it is possible to supply gasoline and diesel,” added the spokeswoman.
NIOPDC CEO Yalil Salarí reported that the problem was being repaired manually and an offline system was in place. Still, in Tehran, a city of about nine million people, only 15 gas stations were operating by mid-afternoon.
At the same time that this was happening, in the city of Isfahan, an electronic traffic sign was hacked and reproduced the phrase: “Khameneí! Where is our gasoline? ”Reported state television.
That phrase addressed to the supreme leader of Iran, the cleric Ali Khameneí, went viral on the social network Twitter and the messaging application Telegram.
The incident occurs weeks before the anniversary of the 2019 protests, which began due to the rise in fuel prices, and were strongly repressed by the Islamist regime.
Cyberattacks
This is the latest cyberattack against Iranian infrastructure, which has suffered several such attacks in recent years.
These include a series of explosions and fires at vital facilities in the country such as the Parchín military base, a petrochemical plant and an electric power plant.
In 2019, Tehran claimed that the United States had launched several cyber attacks against the computers that run the country’s missile launch systems, without any success.
The Iranian Armed Forces have threatened “firm and decisive responses” to these attacks. (I)
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