Azernews.Az

Recent hacker attacks on government and public websites of Azerbaijan were carried out from Iran and the Netherlands, the Azerbaijani communications minister told reporters last Saturday.

"Twenty five sites were affected by the January 16 attack, but their work was restored within two hours," Ali Abbasov said.

"Investigation into the case was completed yesterday, and it revealed that 24 attacks were carried out from Iran and one from the Netherlands," he said.

"We sent a letter to the Iranian side yesterday indicating the exact [IP] addresses whence the attack was carried out. We believe that Iran could have been used as a transit country and the attack could have been initiated from a third country."

"We believe that government agencies of those countries aren't involved in this incident," Abbasov said.

A group of hackers calling themselves Azerian Cyber Army attacked the websites of the interior ministry, the communications ministry, the state customs committee, the council for state support to NGOs under the President, and the education ministry. Also attacked were the sites of the Constitutional Court, the ruling Yeni (New) Azerbaijan Party (YAP), Trend and AzerTAj news agencies.

On the hacked websites the intruders posted critical remarks about Azerbaijan-Israel relations.

The same day, several websites in Israel -- including the sites of the El Al airline and the Tel Aviv stock exchange -- were attacked.

In retaliation to the cyber-attacks, Azerbaijani hackers crashed over 20 Iranian websites, including those of government agencies, and warned they would continue attacking Iranian websites.

Iran has dismissed the reports linking it to the attacks on Azerbaijani Internet resources. Iranian embassy spokesman Abbas Isgandari told the Baku-based Trend news agency earlier that his country has no bearing on the cyber-attacks, and the reports to that end damage relations between the two countries.

Head of Azerbaijan Internet Forum, Osman Gunduz, warned that "a cyber-war" has been declared on Azerbaijan, saying the country may come under a threat of "a total crash of its cyber-space".