Montenegrin police and the FBI arrested a 39-year-old Iranian man in Kotor suspected of orchestrating cyberattacks that inflicted $3.4 billion in damage on US infrastructure, authorities said. They added that the information he gathered was allegedly used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Montenegrin authorities, working with the FBI, announced the arrest of a 39-year-old Iranian national in the coastal resort town of Kotor on Friday, according to Reuters and Ynet. The suspect is accused of being behind cyberattacks that caused an estimated $3.4 billion in damage to U.S. infrastructure, and is wanted in the United States. The information he gathered was allegedly used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the authorities stated.
This arrest comes amid a broader backdrop of tensions in the cyber domain between Iran and the West. The Zioneer has previously reported on an IRGC claim of strikes against American military targets, though that claim remains unverified, and on a separate suspected cyberattack on major Iranian banks. The current case marks the first clear instance of an Iranian operative tied to the IRGC being arrested abroad for cyber operations against US targets in the recent period. The specific timing and nature of the attacks the suspect is linked to have not been detailed.
2 developments
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- StrongReport: Iran is prime suspect in cyberattacks on water systems in seven US states
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Source and signal
- Open-source intake