Train services in Iran were delayed by apparent cyberattacks on Friday, i24NEWS reports.
According to the reports, the hackers posted the phone number of the country's Supreme Leader as the number to call for information.
Trains were delayed or cancelled as ticket offices, the national railway's website and cargo services were disrupted, with "unprecedented chaos at railway stations across the country", state broadcaster IRIB reported.
A notice on electronic boards at stations asked travelers to call a number which in fact belonged to the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
IRIB later quoted a state railway company spokesman as saying technicians were checking the disruptions and denying that there were major delays.
Iran has been hit by several cyber attacks in recent years. Last October, Iranian officials confirmed the country’s Port Authority had been hit in a cyberattack, which was attributed to “sworn enemies” who “failed to achieve their goals” of hitting Iran’s economy through sanctions.
In December of 2019, Iran’s telecommunications minister said the country had defused a cyberattack which was “aimed at spying on government intelligence”.
Previously, it was reported that the US had launched a secret cyberattack against Iran. The attack reportedly wiped out a critical database used by Iran’s paramilitary arm to plot attacks against oil tankers and degraded Tehran’s ability to covertly target shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)