From usnews.com
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.
The Iranian Embassy in Sweden in a statement rejected the accusation as “baseless” and said it was intended to “poison” relations between Tehran and Stockholm, the official IRNA news agency reported. The embassy expects the Swedish government to prevent the spread of such statements, the report said.
In August 2023, Swedish media reported that a large number of people in Sweden had received text messages in Swedish calling for revenge against people who were burning the Quran, Ljungqvist said, adding that the sender of the messages was “a group calling itself the Anzu team.”
Swedish broadcaster SVT published a photo of a text message, saying that “those who desecrated the Quran must have their work covered in ashes” and calling Swedes “demons.”
The protests were held under the freedom of speech act, which is protected under the Swedish constitution. The rallies were approved by police. However, the incidents left Sweden torn between its commitment to free speech and its respect for religious minorities.
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