Iran media 'being targeted by American and British hackers'

Hackers who accessed websites of some of Iran's daily papers are from the United States and Britain, Iranian telecommunication officials have said. A Sunday statement carried by the official IRNA news agency quotes the officials as saying the hackers targeted 30 websites on Saturday, including some belonging to Iranian newspapers.

It added, however, that the websites were poorly secured.

Late on Saturday hackers accessed the dailies' websites and changed their Farsi top stories to a contrived report about the death of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

No one has claimed responsibility for the cyberattacks.

Since 2012, the US has blamed Iranian hackers for targeting American banks, a small dam near New York City and the email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials.

Last year, an Iranian man was charged by US authorities with hacking into HBO network and threatening to release un-aired episodes of the popular TV fantasy drama Game of Thrones unless a ransom was paid.

Behzad Mesri - also known as "Skote Vahshat" - threatened to release the files unless the network paid a ransom of $6 million.

US prosecutors charged Mesri with the hack in a sealed indictment that was released on Tuesday, although Mesri is believed to be in Iran.

Attorney Joon Kim said that although he could not be immediately arrested, he would face "repurcussions," 

"He will never be able to travel outside of Iran without fear of being arrested and brought here," Kim said. 

Mesri was a "sophisticated" hacker, Kim said, who had carried out attacks on other computer systems across the world.