14 DAY TRIAL // US officials say they’re certain that Iran is behind the recent attacks launched against financial institutions. They say that the cyberattacks are part of a covert operation that comes in retaliation for the attacks launched against Iran and the Western economic sanctions imposed on the country.
The intelligence officials who have spoken with the Times have failed to provide any evidence to back their claims. However, experts say that the attacks are too sophisticated to be launched by amateurs.
“There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks,” James Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a cyber-security expert, told the New York Times.
Lewis has revealed that the distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks launched by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters are much more destructive than the ones Russia launched against Estonia in 2007.
Other experts cited by the New York Times say that the attackers are not using personal computers as bots in their DDOS botnet, but datacenters. This reinforces the findings of Incapsula experts, who have recently discovered that a company’s server was being used as a botnet zombie.