Sweden says Iran was behind thousands of text messages calling for revenge over Quran burnings
Sweden says that Iran was behind thousands of text messages that were sent to people in the Scandinavian country calling for revenge over the burnings of Islam's holy book in 2023
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Swedish authorities accused Iran on Tuesday of being responsible for thousands of text messages sent to people in Sweden calling for revenge over the burnings of Islam's holy book in 2023. Iran denied the accusation.
According to officials in Stockholm, the cyberattack was carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which hacked an SMS service and sent “some 15,000 text messages in Swedish” over the string of public burnings of the Quran that took place over several months in Sweden during the summer of 2023.
Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said a preliminary investigation by Sweden’s SAPO domestic security agency showed “it was the Iranian state via the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, that carried out a data breach at a Swedish company that runs a major SMS service.”
The Swedish company was not named.
