An Iranian cybercrime group has been accused of launching cyberattacks on the Port of London Authority website. The website was attacked yesterday and is believed to be a politically motivated attack, according to security researchers.
Iranian Cybercriminals Attacked the Port of London.
The cyberattack is thought to have been carried out by the Alhatrea hacking gang. The website continues to be down at the time of writing due to the distributed denial of service attack launched by the attackers.
According to an Israeli security company, Checkpoint, the Alhatrea gang posted on its Telegram channel that it launched a DDoS attack on the Port of London website. They posted a message on their telegram channel saying “Port of London, why not. it burns when i pee”.
The PLA maintained that normal operations are running smoothly. The offensive was motivated by a bid for vengeance. The threat actors that their actions were in response to the deaths of Iraqi children caused by U.S. economic sanctions.
They claimed to be fighting for every Iranian who suffered because of the sanctions and the children that were killed in Syria and Yemen. The group also sided with the Russians as they alleged they were unjustly placed under siege.
Previous Attacks by Alhatrea Team
The Alhatrea team gained recognition for attacking Israel’s public institutions. Last month, the hacking group carried out cyberattacks on Israel’s Airports Authority website. It was also noted that they launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the websites and that seems to be their common method of launching attacks.
The gang has been known for multiple DDoS attacks on Israeli media like the Jpost, Israeli 9 channel and have even threatened to launch attacks on Nasdaq. Checkpoint stated in a report, “These loud attacks seem to be politically motivated, aimed at making noise rather than damage, clarify the researchers, hence why they use Distributed Denial of Service attacks as a method, which is simple but very disruptive and visible.”
