Sweden has revealed it was the target of a coordinated cyberattack by the Iranian security services in 2023. In August last year, hackers took over a short messaging (SMS) service and urged recipients to “take revenge” on people who had burned Qurans in the country.
Approximately 15,000 messages were sent.
The announcement on Tuesday, September 24th, adds a new dimension to events that occurred in the tense summer of 2023. Sweden’s government and police condemned the Quran burnings, which ultimately enjoy protection under freedom of expression laws.
Anger ensued in immigrant-dense parts of Sweden as well as in various Muslim-majority states, including Iraq, where protestors burned parts of the Swedish embassy. The United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the stunts as religious hate acts, and Turkey used the country’s allowing of Quran burnings to apply pressure to Sweden during its NATO accession process. EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell also issued a statement calling the act “offensive, disrespectful and a clear provocation.”
According to senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist, in a press release:
The preliminary investigation shows that it was the Iranian state, via the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), that conducted a data breach at a Swedish company operating a major SMS service. … Since the actors are acting on behalf of a foreign power, in this case, Iran, we assess that conditions for prosecution abroad or extradition to Sweden are lacking for the individuals suspected of being behind the intrusion.
The vengeful text messages came from the self-declared “Anzu team”, linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), following a July 2023 hack of the messaging company involving compromised passwords and usernames.
Iran’s embassy in Stockholm has rejected the accusations as “baseless.”
