14 DAY TRIAL // Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters have initiated phase three of Operation Ababil, a campaign which they claim aims at getting the US government to order the removal of the Innocence of Muslims movie from the Web.
According to a report from NBC News, over the past six weeks, the websites of 15 major US financial institutions have been disrupted for a total of 249 hours.
The attacks keep intensifying and in many cases, the targeted organizations can’t do anything to stop them.
However, Michael Smith, director of the customer security incident response team at Akamai, a company contracted by some of the banks to help them fend off the attacks, says the Cyber Fighters have stopped naming their targets before attacking them and they’ve also turned to attacking smaller organizations.
On the other hand, after the attack on American Express last week, Dan Holden, director of Arbor Networks’ Security Engineering & Response Team told Ars Technica that the DDOS attacks appeared to be well funded.
“Regardless of who's behind this, it has to be funded at some level. Even if it's hacktivists, it's got to be funded hacktivism,” Holden explained.
US Representative for Michigan's 8th congressional district Mike Rogers has told NBC News that he has no doubt that the Iranian government is behind the attacks.
“These banks are among the best in the country when it comes to cyber security, but even they are having trouble keeping up with attacks that have the sophistication and the level of resources that a nation-state entity like Iran can devote to them,” Rogers said.
The official highlights that Congress must pass information sharing legislation to help organizations protect their networks and assets. The government is currently sharing information with the attacked banks to help them “get ahead,” but Rogers says that “a series of policy and legal barriers are impeding that cooperation.”
The latest targets of the hackers are Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One and Citibank.