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发帖数: 901 | 1 The Iranian government has officially denied any involvement in the wave of
relatively unsophisticated cyber attacks that have struck glancing blows on
websites for U.S. financial institutions over the past months.
"Unlike the United States, which has, per reports in the media, given itself
the license to engage in illegal cyber-warfare against Iran, Iran respects
the international law and refrains from targeting other nations' economic or
financial institutions," the Iranian mission to the United Nations said in
a statement, according to a report published late Thursday by Iran's semi-
official PressTV.
The websites for several major U.S. financial institutions, including Bank
of America, PNC, Wells Fargo and the New York Stock Exchange have suffered
intermittent disruptions since September, apparently the product of what's
known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks designed to flood the
websites with enough traffic to knock it out of commission. The DDoS attacks
, though unprecedented in size and stamina, do not breach the banks' secure
networks or access confidential information. They have, however, kept some
online customers from accessing their accounts for brief periods.
Shortly after the banks' websites started crashing, U.S. officials told
several news organizations, including ABC News, that they suspected Iran was
behind the wave of attacks, even though another group calling itself the al
-Qassam Cyber Fighters took credit for it online. In a report by The New
York Times Thursday, a former U.S. official said there was "no doubt within
the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks."
"We believe that raising such groundless accusations are aimed at sullying
Iran's image and fabricating pretexts to push ahead with and step up illegal
actions against the Iranian nation and government," the Iran's missions
statement said, apparently referring to the U.S.'s alleged involvement in a
series of powerful cyber attacks targeting Iran.
READ: Could Cyber Superweapon Stuxnet Be Turned on the US?
A spokesperson for the al-Qassam Cyber Fighters told ABC News in November
that they are not connected to any government, but are only trying to force
the U.S. government to get YouTube to remove the extremely low-budget film "
The Innocence of Muslims" from its website. The film, which depicts the
Prophet Mohammed as a fraud and pedophile, sparked real-world protests in
more than a dozen countries in September.
READ: US Bank Cyber Attackers Deny Iran Connection
Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at the Moscow-based cyber security
firm Kaspersky Labs, told ABC News today that the DDoS attacks could have
been done by an independent group and did not necessarily require the
expertise or financial support that a state like Iran could provide.
"It's really rather simple," he said. "We don't see enough evidence that
would categorize this operation as something only a nation-state sponsored
actor could pull off." |
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