The Israel-bound hacker a group known as Discount sparrow implemented some of the most obstructive and destructive cyber attacks in history, twice disabling thousands of gas station pay systems across Iran and once even igniting a steel mill in the country. Now, in the midst of a new war unfolding between the two countries, they seem to be bent about burning the financial system of Iran.
Predatory Sparrow, who often goes through his Farsi name, Gonjeshke Darande, to try to appear as a home -country hacktitivist organization, announced in a post on its X -Account on Wednesday, that it was intended for the Iranian crypt -exchange Nobitex, accusing the isolated royal garden and exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange of exchange exchange of exchange of exchange. and terror. According to Cryptocurrency Tracing Firm Elliptic, the hackers destroyed more than $ 90 million In Nobitex Holdings, a rare occurrence of hackers burning crypt values instead of stealing them.
“These cyber attacks are the result of Nobitex to be a key regime tool for funding terrorism and violation of sanctions,” the hackers have posted to X. “Associated with regime -terror funding and sanctioned violation -infrastructure risk your assets.”
The incident follows another Predan Sparrow attack against Iran’s financial system on Wednesday, in which the same group aimed at the Iranian bank of Iran, claiming to have “all” the bank’s data “data in retaliation for their associations with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran, and posting documents that seemed to show agreements between the bank and the Iranian military. “Attention: to associate with the regime’s instruments for evading sanctions and fund its ballistic missiles and nuclear program is bad for your long -term financial health,” the hackers wrote. “Who follows?”
Sepah Bank’s website was off the right yesterday But it seemed to work again today. The bank did not respond to Wired’s request for a comment. The Nobitex website was offline today and the company could not be commented.
As is often the case in the fog of unfolding war and its accompanying cyber attacks, which affects the cyber attacks of predatory Sparrow, which remain unclear. But Hamid Kashfi, an Iranian cyber security researcher living in Sweden and the founder of the Darkcell cyber security firm, says he heard from contacts in Iran, that the Internet banking of Sepah and ATMs have been offline since the attacks, causing widespread disruption to civilian skills. “There have been plenty of side damage,” Kashfi says. “It seems only to be directly causing damage and chaos. I can’t think of what would be another logic behind it. Yes, they provide services to the military. But they also make millions of regular Joes and civilians.”
In the Nobitex attack, Blockchain analysis reveals some of the details of Priday Sparrow’s sabotage: According to Elliptic, the eight-digit amount stolen from the exchange has been transferred to a series of crypto-addresses, which all began with variations of the phrase “Fuckercterists.” Those called “vain” addresses typically cannot be created in any way that offer control or recovery of funds held there, so Elliptical concludes that moving funds to those addresses were instead indicated a method of destroying the money. “Hackers clearly have political instead of financial incentives,” says Tom Robinson, the co -founder of Elliptic. “The crypt they stole was effectively burned.”
