TIRANA, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Albania cut diplomatic ties with Iran on Wednesday and fired its diplomats after a July cyber attack blamed on the Islamic Republic, a move backed by Washington as it vowed to take action in response to attack on her. NATO ally. Albania ordered Iranian diplomats and embassy staff to leave within 24 hours. “The government has decided with immediate effect to end diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said in a video statement. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up “This extreme response … is fully commensurate with the gravity and danger of the cyberattack that threatened to paralyze public services, wipe out digital systems and breach government records, steal government intranet electronic communications, and cause chaos and insecurity in country,” he added. he said. There was no immediate comment from the Iranian embassy in Tirana. There were no police units around the Iranian embassy premises in Tirana. The United States said it concluded after weeks of investigation that Iran was behind the “reckless and irresponsible” July 15 cyber attack. “The United States will take further action to hold Iran accountable for actions that threaten the security of a US ally and set a troubling cyber precedent,” the White House National Security Council said in a statement.
TENSE RELATIONS SINCE 2014
Albania and Iran have had strained relations since 2014, when Albania accepted around 3,000 members of the exiled opposition group People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq, who have settled in a camp near Durres of the country. main port. US cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which noted the hacking activity in a blog post earlier this month, said the group – which had ties to Iran – developed a sophisticated attack that used data-wiping malware against Iranian dissidents. “This is perhaps the strongest public response to a cyberattack we’ve ever seen,” John Hultquist, Mandiant’s vice president of information, said in an emailed statement. “While we have seen many other diplomatic consequences in the past, they have not been as severe or widespread as this action.” The move comes days after NATO member Montenegro blamed a criminal group called Cuba Ransomware for a digital attack on its government infrastructure that officials described as unprecedented. “While the incidents are probably unrelated, regular outages in government infrastructure are a troubling trend,” Hultquist said. Albania has previously said it has foiled several planned attacks by Iranian agents against the Iranian opposition. “Our in-depth investigation has given us incontrovertible evidence that the cyber attack against our country was orchestrated and financed by the Islamic Republic of Iran through the involvement of four groups that enabled the attack,” Rama said. The US government has been on the ground for weeks with private sector partners to investigate and help Albania recover from the attack that destroyed government data and disrupted public services, the White House said. “We have concluded that the government of Iran carried out this reckless and irresponsible cyber attack and is responsible for subsequent hacking and leaking operations,” it said. The United States called the attack unprecedented because it said it violated the peacetime rule of not damaging critical infrastructure relied on by the public. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Reporting by Florion Goga and Fatos Bytyci, Doina Chiacu in Washington, James Pearson in London. Edited by Edmund Blair, Alex Richardson, William Maclean Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
