IRGC-Affiliated News Website Hacked Reportedly By Israeli Group

The website of Fars News Agency, a hardliner Iranian media outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, has been hacked allegedly by an Israeli group of hackers.

The group, named "Army of Thieves", claimed credit for the cyberattack Sunday evening.

The IRGC-affiliated webpage is still down when pinged from abroad following the denial-of-service attack (DoS attack), in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network.

The hacking group was responsible for other attacks on Iranian organizations, including the website of Iran’s Islamic Azad University.

In June, Israel said an IRGC cyber unit called “Shahid Kaveh” conducted research to damage ships, gas stations and industrial plants in several countries including Britain, the US, France and Israel.

Defense minister Benny Gantz said that Israel -- which is widely believed to have waged cyber war against Iran's nuclear facilities and other infrastructure -- may retaliate physically against enemy hackers.

Iran has been repeatedly accused of cyberattacks against the West, Israel and rival Arab countries in the Middle East.