A group of Iranian “Hacktivists”, gained access to servers of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, and released large amounts of data before defacing the website.
GhyamSarnegouni, which translates to “Rise to Overthrow”, a group responsible for the destruction of Iranian Foreign Ministry websites, announced their involvement on Sunday. An Iran International report claims that the group released data such as identification documents, correspondence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and phone numbers of over 11,000 employees.
It was still not working late on Sunday morning. The website displayed a message that stated it was “undergoing scheduled maintenance and upgrade”.
On the morning of Sunday, March 25, 2013, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s websites in Dubai, Munich, and Seoul were hacked. The message was directed at Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
The message said: “Death Khamenei!” “Hail Rajavi!”
The Associated Press reports that Rajavi may be referring to either the missing leader of the Iranian Exile Movement Mujahedeen e-Khalq or his wife Maryam. Maryam is the public face of the group.
The message continued to state that “There is an enormous revolutionary movement in Iran.” “The uprising is going to continue until all the oppressive palaces are destroyed. ”
Hacking groups began targeting websites and services of official government agencies in 2010 when anti-regime protests began to sweep across the country. Hackers have hacked more than 5,000 government-owned security cameras and 150 websites run by the local government in Tehran.
According to Iran International, documents hacked by the latest hacker reveal the correspondence between Iranian officials and European officials about a proposed exchange of Iranian diplomat Asadollah Assadi currently held in Belgium with Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele.
Assadi was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years imprisonment in Belgium in 2018 for his role in the planning of a bombing attack against a gathering of an Iranian resistance movement near Paris. Vandecasteele is serving a sentence of 20 years in Belgium after being arrested by Iranian security forces in 2022. He was accused of spying on the United States, cooperating with them, and money laundering, as well as smuggling $5000 from Iran.
Vandecasteele was sentenced in January to 40 years imprisonment for “arbitrary” charges brought by the Belgian Government.
