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U.S. Indicts 7 Iranians Accused of Hacking U.S. Financial Institutions (npr.org) 45

Posted by BeauHD from the time-to-take-a-trip-downtown dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted seven Iranians with intelligence links over a series of crippling cyberattacks against 46 U.S. financial institutions between 2011 and 2013. The indictment, which was unsealed Thursday, also accuses one of the Iranians of remotely accessing the control system of a small dam in Rye, N.Y, during the same period. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the indictment is meant to send a message: "That we 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." According to the indictment, the seven men worked for two Iran-based computer security companies that have done work for the Iranian government, including the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The men allegedly carried out large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelm a server with communications in order to disable it.
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U.S. Indicts 7 Iranians Accused of Hacking U.S. Financial Institutions More

U.S. Indicts 7 Iranians Accused of Hacking U.S. Financial Institutions

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  • except this time.

  • US is a wheening child (Score:5, Insightful)

    by johanw ( 1001493 ) on Thursday March 24, 2016 @05:05PM (#51772677)

    Considering the massive sabotage they inflicted in Iran, why would the Iranians even care? I assume Iran can now indict some NSA employees?

    • Re:US is a wheening child (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday March 24, 2016 @06:04PM (#51772933)

      I assume Iran can now indict some NSA employees?

      Sure, why not? This is all just theater anyway. These indictments will have no effect whatsoever, since the indicted Iranians are living in Iran and not subject to American jurisdiction. If anything, they are probably happy to be indicted, since it means their hard work is being recognized, they will now be lauded as heroes, and maybe they will even be able to get a date (or an arranged marriage).

      • Political theater is always amusing. But the one question that I have is, "Were the sites hit using Windows?" And really, who gets gives a flying foxtrot if Goldman Sachs is here tomorrow?

        • Funny you don't hear about indictments for Chinese crackers.

          Seems to me that partially successful stuff is doing us a favor (aside from taking out Goldman Sachs) in that losses are relatively low and it encourages hardening. Plus it makes it easy to monitor what they're up to and what their capabilities are. The scariest hacks are the ones from unknown sources using unknown exploits kept secret until an opportune moment.

  • Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24, 2016 @05:06PM (#51772687)

    When US hacks Iran's industrial sites, that's A-OK! When the Iranians hack something back it's a crime.

    • Re: Really? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The one with the biggest guns makes the law. The NSA hacks US citizens all the time, but if you are a US citizen and you get caught hacking the NSA, good luck with that.

      • Absolutely. The police can arrest people and put them in jail. But when I kidnap people and put them in my basement dungeon, it's "illegal". Hypocrisy at it's worst.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khasim ( 1285 )

      And didn't it turn out that that dam wasn't even connected to the Internet? And that the "problem" was that it had NEVER worked?

      Ooooh! Scary Iranians can DoS our systems. Just like any 12 year old with a copy of Low Orbit Ion Cannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Orbit_Ion_Cannon [wikipedia.org]

      First Obama demands that encryption be b0rked for US citizens and now this?

    • Do you even understand that countries are allowed to take actions that are in their own interest? And defend themselves against hostile nations? Seriously? The Iranians are likewise free to do the same, and face the consequences. That's how the game is played, for fuck's sake. Instead we have this situation whenever America does something it is always wrong, because to say otherwise might give aid and comfort to the enemy - Americans.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dywolf ( 2673597 )

        Keep talking junior.
        You're only digging your well of incoherent ignorance deeper.

        • Well, let's see. The US hacked the Iranian government (or government contractors if you believe such a thing really exists there) and the Iranians hacked private businesses. Only a Sanders supporter will fail to see the difference between a government and private business.

    • Why would the US indict it's own intelligence agencies, that's now how this works.

  • The subject says it all....

  • How many (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Livius ( 318358 ) on Thursday March 24, 2016 @05:10PM (#51772709)

    ...indictments for the Wall Street gamblers who not only tried but actually did "sabotage American financial institutions or undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market".

  • Threadjack, skip April fools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Thursday March 24, 2016 @05:24PM (#51772759)
    It's getting to be that time of year, April 1, where this site (and others) post really stupid crap because either A) someone thought it was funny; or B) someone thought they should think it funny even though it's not. Trust me, it's very seldom funny.

    In the spirit of the Trump/Sanders campaigns can I ask that /. skip the annual "post a bunch of stupid stuff all day long".

    Can I make a poll of this?

    • I had fun once. It was terrible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      Seconded. I skip /. the whole day of 1st April every year for that reason.

      Maybe they will care when they see the hit rates drop to the bottom, otherwise I don't hold any hope it will change.

  • "we will not allow any individual, group, or nation to ... undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market"

    What *are* they talking about

  • I wish I were smart enough to figure out what's going on behind the scenes aside from not letting even a minor crisis go to waste. After Benghazi, Syria, ISIS, and Russia... with China fucking around in Africa, Germany fucking around in Greece... the whole eastern Europe orgy and the US sticking its dong in every ass there are spy games of Byzantinian proportions, that I do know. Another thing I know is this has nothing to do with Iranian system breakers. But I wish I knew what is really going on.

    And I wis

    • I wish I were smart enough to figure out what's going on behind the scenes...

      Sometimes I wish I was dumb enough to not wander about such things. I'm starting to believe that ignorance truly is bliss.

    • Dude, not that complicated ... everybody is fucking with almost everybody else ... and the people you're not fucking with, you probably have allies who are fucking with them and sharing the information with you.

      And then everybody is acting outraged at the other guys who are fucking with them, while kinda sorta denying in a half-assed way that they're doing the same thing.

      Every now and then to stroke their own ego or boost a little nationalism, they point at someone else and say "hey, you're fucking with us,

  • Trump you like to mess with water well we can to!

    Some waterboarding will get the info out of you.

  • 3 Cheers! (Score:3)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Thursday March 24, 2016 @09:24PM (#51773743)
    I might be the only one cheering this on but America's financial institutions had this coming. Payback for fucking over the 99%. Ain't karma a fickle whore?

  • Uh, yeah, right. (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday March 24, 2016 @10:42PM (#51774013)

    ...undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market."

    By all means prosecute the people committing cybercrime, regardless of what country they're from. But please don't thump your chest and run off at the mouth about "Truth, Justice, and The American Way" when all you're doing is protecting the home-grown crooks and their scams from the foreign crooks and their scams.

  • This is a theatrical event put on for people in the US and to a lessor extent, Europe.

    Since the US Government is spending so much on "security", they have to justify it by at least occasionally trying to catch somebody. As others have already pointed out, this has as much real world effect as putting a sign in you window telling the kids to stay off your lawn.

    Many of the cyber attacks against US institutions and infrastructure are state sponsored. Picking out a few individuals and blaming them is a bad jo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whit3 ( 318913 )

      This is a theatrical event put on for people in the US and to a lessor[sic] extent, Europe.

      Oh, it's more than that. It's public notice that criminal misbehavior by the persons named has been uncovered, and that the US is NOT declaring war, but is seeking all normal cooperation (including extradition) of friendly nations in apprehending them. It's much more polite than Stuxnet, and isn't in response to treaty violations by a nation (like, the nonproliferation treaty violations that got Iran into past d

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