An Israeli hacker group called “We Red Evils Original” (usually styled as “WeRedEvils”) took credit on Thursday for causing widespread wi-fi outages in Iran.
“In the coming minutes, we will attack Internet systems and providers in Iran. A severe blow is on the way,” the group said on the messaging app Telegram on Thursday.
Shortly after that message was posted, the Jerusalem Post found Iranian social media users complaining about Internet access going down in various parts of the country, including the capital city of Tehran.
“We successfully broke into the Iranian communications system and collected a lot of information that was passed on to the security forces in Israel,” the hackers said in a follow-up post on Telegram.
“We know there are some Iranians here who support the Revolutionary Guards, and we would like to contact them personally. Stop raising red flags and start raising a white flag,” they said.
Forbes on Friday pointed out that public networks are “patchy” in Iran at the best of times, so it is difficult to determine how extensive the wi-fi outage was and if the hackers actually caused it.
The Jerusalem Post noted that WeRedEvils “has been operating in a non-official capacity since the beginning of the Hamas war.” There is evidence to believe it is the real deal, most notably its successful attack on the electrical grid in Tehran in October 2023.
Tehran lost power for about two hours in that incident. WeRedEvils claimed it was responsible for hacking “several sensitive systems in Iran,” including “the electricity grid in Tehran and the surrounding villages.”
The group said on Telegram after the brief blackout:
We cut off their electricity, and we left tens of thousands of residents without a means of communication and electricity for two hours until this moment. This is a message from us to Iran: don’t play with fire. The next strike will be harder with many more harmed, and it will be different from the cyber attacks that you’re familiar with.
WeRedEvils also claims it knocked out the Hamas website, disrupted a Telegram channel that was triumphantly posting photos from the October 7 atrocities Hamas perpetrated against Israeli civilians, and stole “vital and sensitive software” related to Iran’s oil rigs and nuclear reactors.
In early November, WeRedEvils claimed it knocked out the Internet in Yemen to retaliate against the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents for attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
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