In a targeted cyber-attack, hackers infiltrated an Orthodox Jewish news publication’s website following warnings from US officials about potential Iran-aligned cyber threats amid the conflict in the Middle East last month.
The Yeshiva World News website was compromised with imagery of the deceased ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei alongside Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is reported to have been appointed as the new leader of the nation.
The ominous message, “Now we are in control,” appeared in Farsi, as reported by PIX 11, and included an antisemitic slur. Later, the website displayed a message stating, “we will be back shortly thank you,” according to the same source.
By Thursday, Yeshiva World News had resumed normal operations, though efforts to obtain a comment from the outlet were unsuccessful.
Though the perpetrators of this alarming cyber-attack remain unidentified, the Department of Homeland Security had previously cautioned that Iran-aligned “hacktivists” might execute “low-level cyber-attacks against US networks, such as website defacement and distributed denial-of-service attacks,” following Khamenei’s assassination, as noted by ABC News.
The Department of Homeland Security’s February 28 bulletin mentioned that although a large-scale physical attack is improbable, Iran and its affiliates are likely to pose an ongoing threat of targeted attacks domestically and may intensify retaliatory measures—or calls for action—if reports of the Ayatollah’s death are verified.
According to a review by the Jerusalem Post, social media and Telegram channels associated with Iranian hackers did not reveal any group claiming responsibility for the attack.
Meanwhile, US and Israeli forces launched airstrikes against the Iranian regime late last month, resulting in the deaths of several top officials in Tehran.
