DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Associated Pressو September 22, 2016 – A series of fires at Iranian petrochemical plants and facilities have raised suspicions about hacking potentially playing a role, with authorities saying that “viruses had contaminated” equipment at several of the affected complexes.
This Nov. 17, 2007, file photo, shows a portion of the Tehran oil refinery, in Tehran, Iran. A series of fires at Iranian petrochemical plants and facilities have raised suspicions about hacking potentially playing a role in the blazes. Iran officially insists the six known blazes this summer weren’t the result of a cyberattack. However, authorities themselves saying that “viruses had contaminated” equipment at several of the affected complexe
Iran officially insists the six known blazes over the span of three months weren’t the result of a cyberattack. However, the government acknowledgment of supposedly protected facilities being infected points to the possibility of a concerted effort to target Iranian infrastructure in the years after the Stuxnet virus disrupted thousands of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility.
In this Nov. 17, 2007 file photo, a worker repairs a part of a unit of the Tehran oil refinery, in Tehran, Iran. A series of fires at Iranian petrochemical plants and facilities have raised suspicions about hacking potentially playing a role in the blazes. Iran officially insists the six known blazes this summer weren’t the result of a cyberattack
Among the worst of the fires was a massive, days-long inferno in July at the Bou Ali Sina Petrochemical Complex in Iran’s southwestern province of Khuzestan. Insurance officials later estimated the damage at some $67 million. Authorities preliminarily blamed the blaze on a leak of paraxylene, a flammable hydrocarbon, without elaborating
