The Justice Department officially announced Thursday it would indict seven Iranian hackers for cyberattacks against the United States.
The indictment says the hackers attacked a slew of financial institutions including Bank of America, Capitol One Bank, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, in addition to a small dam near New York, between 2011 and 2013.
The Iranians named in the indictment are Ahmad Fathi, Hamid Firoozi, Amin Shokohi and Sadegh Ahmadzadegan, who went by the online name of “Nitr0jen26.” Also named are Omid Ghaffarinia, known as “PLuS,” Sina Keissar, and Nader Saedi, known as “Turk Server.”
The hackers “threatened our economic well-being and our ability to compete fairly in the global marketplace – both of which are directly linked to our national security,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a press conference in Washington, D.C. “And we believe that they were conducted with the sole purpose of undermining the targeted companies and damaging the online operation of America’s free market.”
Lynch also added that the unsealing of the indictment should serve as a warning that the U.S. federal government “will not allow any individual, group, or nation to sabotage American financial institutions or undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market.”
This marks only the second time the U.S. has brought hacking charges against officials of another nation — the first being the 2014 indictments of five members of China’s People’s Liberation Army accused of hacking U.S. companies.
None of the individuals named in the indictment — which comes only eight months after the nuclear deal reached between Iran and six other nations, including the U.S. — live in the U.S.
