A spokesman at Iran’s UN mission in New York said Tehran had been falsely accused of cyber attacks against US administration officials.
The official made the statement in response to a Wednesday report by The Wall Street Journal claiming that the Iranian military has stepped up the hacking of email and social media accounts of US administration officials in recent weeks.
The newspaper, citing unnamed US officials, said people working on Iran policy appeared to be the focus of the cyber attacks, with personnel in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs among those hacked. Other targets included journalists and academics.
“We’re aware of certain reports involving Iran,” a senior US administration official told Reuters in response to the WSJ story. “We are aware that hackers in Iran and elsewhere often use cyber attacks to gain information or make connections with targets of interest.”
