Radio Farda, part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has reported that many of its journalists have been under cyber attack. The suspected culprit is Iran.
Acting RFE/RL President Kevin Klose said, “These attacks against our Radio Farda journalists are unlawful and show the lengths to which the Iranian regime will go to prevent a free and independent press.” He added, “We are undeterred as they continue their attempts to intimidate our journalists, and we will continue to report the news.”
Radio Farda Editor in Chief Niusha Boghrati agreed, “We believe this is the work of Iranian security agents. Although we can’t prove it, it is in line with their goal of undermining Radio Farda. And of course it won’t work.”
The attacks have included hacking the Radio Farda Facebook page, creating false and embarrassing fake Facebook pages of select Radio Farda journalists and the attempted delivery of Trojan horse computer viruses to RF journalists’ computers to take over the computers or install monitoring malware for stealing information.
Radio Farda said in a release that it thinks the attacks are timed to intimidate journalists ahead of Iranian presidential elections in June.
