The Justice Department on Thursday is expected to indict six Iranian hackers for cyberattacks against the United States. The indictment is set to come after years of American frustration with Iran over the issue.
The information was leaked to Reuters by officials inside the department late on Wednesday. The officials claimed the indictment will link the hackers directly to the Iranian government, and will focus mainly on a 2013 breach of the Bowman Avenue Dam in Rye Brook, N.Y.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2581024
It will not cover a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks that took place against a broad range of U.S. financial institutions including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, or the Sands Casino in Nevada, officials said, due to a fear of retaliation against those institutions.
The hackers who took credit for the 2013 attack identified as members of SOBH Cyber Jihad. The attack on that minor dam was of no real significance, but officials have suggested the hackers may have instead been attempting to target a dam of the same name in Oregon. That 245-foot-tall structure is more than 10 times larger than the dam in Rye Brook.
In terms of foreign hackers, the Justice Department has spent the greater part of its effort in recent years trying to deter those linked to the Chinese government. The department in 2014 indicted five members of the People’s Liberation Army for hacking companies in an attempt to steal commercial secrets.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2575720
It has taken a lighter approach with Iran, where the Obama administration had been engaged in talks over the country’s nuclear program until last year. As part of the detente during negotiations, cyberattacks coming out of Iran also dropped last year. Now that negotiations are over, experts have said the country will likely pick up its hacking campaign again this year.
