Cyberattack hits Iran's Fars news agency

TEHRAN: Hackers have disrupted the work of Iran's Fars news agency, one of the main sources of news disseminated by the state during protests over Mahsa Amini's death, the agency said.

Iran has been rocked by protests since Amini's death in custody on September 16, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country's dress code for women.

Fars said its website had been disrupted late Friday by a "complex hacking and cyberattack operation".

"Removing possible bugs... may cause problems for some agency services for a few days," it said in a statement posted Saturday on its Telegram channel.

"Cyberattacks against Fars news agency are carried out almost daily from different countries, including the occupied territories (Israel)," it added, without elaborating.

On October 21, a group called Black Reward said it had obtained documents related to Iran's nuclear programme, and demanded the release of all political prisoners and people arrested during the protests.

After its 24-hour ultimatum expired, material on social media said to be released by the group included a short clip from a purported nuclear site in Iran, as well as documents.

On November 23, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran acknowledged that one of its subsidiaries had been targeted by "a specific foreign country", while downplaying the importance of the documents in question.

Iran on the one side and Israel and the United States on the other have regularly accused each other of cyberattacks.