Iran’s financial scene has been rocked this week by a coordinated cyberattack by a well-known hacker group known as Predatory Sparrow, which claimed two high-profile digital assaults on a national bank and the biggest cryptocurrency exchange, respectively.

Known in Farsi as Gonjeshke Darande, the group said on Wednesday that it had targeted the cryptocurrency platform Nobitex, alleging that it supported the Iranian government financing of terror groups and sidestepped sanctions. Blockchain analytics company Elliptic claims that hackers destroyed over $90 million in crypto assets, far more shocking than syphoning off digital assets for personal benefit.

The money was sent into wallet addresses bearing messages like “FuckIRGCterrorists,” vanity wallets inaccessible or impossible to retrieve. This act of permanent crypto destruction marks a rare event in cybercrime history when political messaging took front stage rather than theft.

“The crypto they stole has essentially burned,” Elliptic cofounder Tom Robinson said. This had nothing to do with financial benefit. This was sabotage.

The social media post by Predatory Sparrow justified the attack by characterizing Nobitex as a major component of the financial plan of the Iranian government, supporting fund organizations under international sanctions, including the IRGC, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The post cautioned readers about possibly catastrophic losses resulting from using platforms connected to the dictatorship.

A second target dropped as Iran’s crypto systems staggered from the assault.

The group struck Sepah Bank, one of Iran’s main financial institutions the same day. They claimed in a terrifying declaration to have deleted “all” of the bank’s records and uploaded files seemingly showing financial cooperation between the bank and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Associating with the regime’s instruments for evading sanctions and funding its ballistic missiles and nuclear program is bad for your long-term financial health,” the hackers warned, following up on their attack. Who else?

The website of Sepah Bank went down in the aftermath, but it was back up the following day. Still, Nobitex stayed low. Neither organization has confirmed the degree of the damage or answered media questions.

Common Iranians are already experiencing the consequences, meanwhile.

Based in Sweden, cybersecurity specialist Hamid Kashfi said sources in Iran claimed general problems with ATM access and digital banking, especially for Sepah clients. “There’s a lot of collateral damage here,” he said. “Civilians are having financial access denied to them. Real disturbance in daily life is being brought about by this.

For Predatory Sparrow, this type of fallout is not unusual. Attacks aiming outside data systems and into the physical world have made the group notorious. Their most notorious operation nearly killed several workers when they stole the control system of a steel mill in 2022, allowing molten steel to leak over the floor and start a fire.

Long lines and fuel shortages at gas stations result from their also being twice disabled fuel payment networks and the crash of Iran’s railway system.

Though Predatory Sparrow claims to be an Iranian resistance group, most analysts think it is intimately related to Israel’s cyberdefense or intelligence operations. Their deliberate target choices, advanced technology, and consistent emphasis on Iranian military-linked establishments point to a far more coordinated support.

The chief analyst of Google’s threat intelligence division, John Hultquist, cautioned that this is not your typical hacker group. “This actor is really competent and serious,” he remarked. “Although there will be a lot of noise in cyberspace, few groups can follow this one.”

These fresh strikes seem to be motivated twofold: to send a message to others endorsing similar infrastructure and to punish Iranian financial tools connected to the government. In the realm of cyberwarfare, this is like bombing the treasury of a country without ever launching a missile.

Iran might now be more vulnerable than ever since it is depending more on cryptocurrencies as a workaround for sanctions imposed on it internationally. And with Predatory Sparrow threatening “Who’s next?” it seems this is far from the last chapter.

Right now, just one certainty exists. The currency of this war is not only digital. It is anarchy.