Defense officials on Wednesday struggled to describe the U.S. response to Iranian cyberattacks, with one saying he “didn’t know exactly” before passing the ball to someone else.
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Iranian hackers were implicated in attacks on American financial institutions and a casino company every year from 2011 to 2014. “What economic sanctions or legal actions resulted from this activity?” Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., asked officials during a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. “Are they being maintained?”
Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, the second-ranking official at the Pentagon, struggled for words as he said he had no idea. “I don’t know exactly what sanctions the … attack that you refer to against the financial services was attributed to Iran, as well as the Sands Casino as you said, I’m going to have get back to you and say exactly what we did as a result of those two attacks. Mike might know,” Work concluded, pointing his thumb at Adm. Mike Rogers, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and head of the National Security Agency.
Rogers responded: “No specific sanctions tied to those each individual, discrete events, clearly a broader discussion about what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, we have seen a change in behavior, the activity that we had seen previously directed against financial websites for example, has decreased, in part I think, because of the broader, very public discussion we are having in which we are acknowledging the activity, and we are partnering between the government and the financial sector to see what we could do to work the resiliency piece here to preclude the Iranians’ ability to actually penetrate.”
Iran has targeted the Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the Las Vegas Sands Casino in attacks meant to disrupt their systems, in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on the country. Many in Congress have sought a strong response to cyberattacks against the U.S.
