The Iranian body overseeing the country’s contested nuclear program said its email servers were subject to an “illegal infiltration” by an unknown group in a foreign country.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a statement on its website that a number of emails from the IT unit of a subsidiary called the Nuclear Energy Production and Development Co., which is responsible for making nuclear energy, were published online without authorization.
The AEOI said an internal investigation had been launched “in the shortest possible time” and referred to the matter as a “desperate attempt to attract public attention."
A group called Black Reward claimed in a series of tweets and messages on its Telegram channel on Friday that it had hacked the AEOI as part of a campaign supporting the anti-government protests gripping Iran.
The Telegram messages contained a raft of links to email correspondence that Black Reward claimed involved the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, foreign contracts and Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power station. In its statement, the AEOI didn’t mention Black Reward and said the emails contained “normal everyday exchanges” and were about “technical matters.”
Iran’s nuclear program has been a major factor in driving tensions with the West for almost 20 years. Indirect negotiations between Iran and the U.S. to revive the 2015 nuclear deal that sought to curb Tehran’s atomic activities in exchange for sanctions relief, remain on hold.
The European Union, the main interlocutor in the talks, last week imposed new sanctions in response to both the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown on protests and reports that the regime is supplying Russia with drones for its war in Ukraine.
