A group of Iranian hackers last week on January 4th, hacked the official website of the US Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and posted messages vowing to avenge the death of Iran Top military commander Qasem Soleimani who was killed by the US in a drone strike on Friday.
The hackers who goes by the online handle of "Iran Cyber Security Group Hackers", defaced the US government website and replaced its homepage with a message that displayed images of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian flag.
The image also depicted the US President Donald Trump being punched in the face by a fist coming from Iran accompanied by missiles.
"With his departure and with God's power, his work and path will not cease and severe revenge awaits those criminals who have tainted their filthy hands with his blood and blood of the other martyrs," the message added.
Another caption on the defaced page added, "This is only small part of Iran's cyber ability!"
In a related event, another group of Iranian hackers who called themselves "Shield Iran" hacked Sierra Leone Commercial Bank (slcb.com) and defaced the banks homepage with Soleimani's picture.
The US Department of Homeland Security has released a statement acknowledging the attack.
"We are aware the website of the Federal Depository Library program (FDLP) was defaced with pro-Iranian , anti-US messaging," a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. "At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors. The website was taken offline and is no longer accessible. CISA (the Cybsersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) is monitoring the situation with FDLP and our federal partners."
Following the death of Qasem Soleimani, Trump said the Iranian major general was planning an "imminent" attack on US personnel in Baghdad. He went further to warn that they have 52 targets in Iran and Washington won't hesitate to hit them "very fast and very hard" if the Islamic republic attacked American personnel or its assets.