‘Some in Iran, Netherlands involved in cyber attacks’

Hacker attacks on  the government and public Internet resources of Azerbaijan were carried out from Iran and Netherlands, Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Abbasov told reporters on Saturday. "25 sites suffered as a result of the attack, but their work was restored in about two hours," Abbasov said.

"Investigation on the case was completed the day before, and it was revealed that 24 attacks were carried out from Iran, and 1 from the Netherlands," Abbasov said.

"We sent a letter to the Iranian side yesterday indicating the exact address where the attack was carried out. We believe that Iran could be used as a transit country and the attack could have been initiated from a third country."

"We believe that the governments of those countries aren't involved in this case," Abbasov said.

Abbasov noted that attacks were made on Azerbaijani Internet resources on Jan. 16, on 35 sites of Iran on Jan. 17, on more than 300 Armenian websites on Jan. 19.

"We need to cooperate not only with Iran but also with other neighboring countries in order to prevent such cases. Azerbaijan provides the co-operation within the framework of the Convention on Cybercrime" Abbasov added.

He said this event can be counted as a signal. "We decided to carry out comprehensive measures in this regard. These measures provide the preparation of the main institutional and regulatory - legal instruments and the implementation of necessary technical work. We will cooperate with other state agencies, as well as with agencies of other countries," Abbasov said.

Azerbaijan information resources of various agencies, public organizations and mass media, located on the servers of a computer center of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan and the Special State Protection Service of Azerbaijan have been hacked on Jan. 16.