U.S. Indicts Iranians for Hacking Many Banks & New York Bowman Dam

On Thursday March 24 2016, the US Department of Justice indicted seven hackers associated with the Iranian government, making history for the first time where the USA has charged state-sponsored individuals with hacking to disrupt important US industry networks.
The crimes include attacking U.S. banking websites between 2011 to May 2013 and also breaking into a computer system at Bowman Dam in Rye Brook, Westchester County, NY in a possible attempt to disrupt the operation of the dam.

The attackers have been charged with conspiracy to commit and aid and abet computer hacking for their roles in hacks of the U.S financial sector on more than 176 days.

According to the indictment, all seven men were working for two Iranian computer security companies — ITSecTeam and MERSAD Co. — on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian military established to defend the country’s Islamic system and promote its ideology.

The indictment alleges that the suspects caused DDoS attacks to crash the sites of 46 U.S. financial institutions. At one point, the attacks happened almost weekly and affected many major institutions. The indictment alleges such actions left hundreds of thousands of customers unable to access online bank accounts.

The seven identified hackers (see photo above),range in ages from 23 to 37 are:

Ahmad Fathi (37)
Hamid Firoozi (34)
Amin Shokohi (25)
Sadegh Ahmadzadegan (23)
Omid Ghaffarinia (25)
Sina Keissar (25) and
Nader Seidi (26)

Hamid Firoozi is charged alone for hacking the dam. Amin Shokohi allegedly received credit from the Iranian government toward his mandatory military service for his work in the attacks.

The affected institutions and businesses included:

• Bank of America
• Nasdaq
• New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• Capital One
• AT&T
• PNC

U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the attacks caused tens of millions of $USD in losses.

Sadegh Ahmadzadegan and Omid Ghaffarinia also claimed responsibility for hacking into NASA servers and defacing NASA websites, and Firoozi obtained access to a computer control system for the Bowman Avenue Dam. That access would have allegedly allowed Hamid Firoozi to operate and manipulate a gate on the dam. The attack by Hamid Firoozi took place between August 28 2013 and Sept 18 2013.
He was able to access information related to the status and operation of the dam and the status of the sluice gate—responsible for controlling water levels and flow rates.
However, at the time of the hacks the Bowman Dam sluice gate had been manually disconnected for maintenance.

Wrong target/dry run?

Mayor Paul Rosenberg in the village of Rye Brook, NY has theories why the sluice-gate small Bowman dam had been targeted by the Iranians.
One theory is that Iranian hackers had confused the dam with another dam named Bowman — the Arthur R. Bowman Dam on the Crooked River in Oregon. That dam is 245 feet tall and 800 feet long and is used to irrigate many local farms.
Mayor Rosenberg also thought the hackers had gone after the Rye Brook dam as a dry run for a more disruptive invasion such as, for example a major hydroelectric generator or some other part of the USA's critical power grid.

Reasons, Iranian & Russian Collaboration

The reasons for the DDoS attacks by Iran are probably in response to strong economic sanctions by the USA and Europe in attempts to make Iran stop its nuclear activities.

The IRGC operates in the cyberspace using front companies, which allows the IRGC to circumvent Western law & give them some anonymity.
The Iranian state may be receiving help from Russian hackers affiliated with the Kremlin, which involves writing code or providing malware tools they can adapt.

Iran has previously been suspected in hacking attempts. A Wall Street Journal report linked the IRGC to similar hacking and phishing attempts targeting the email and social-media accounts of President Obama's administration officials.

Details

The indictment can be read here

Iranian Hackers Attack State Dept. via Social Media Accounts

Iran launched sophisticated computer espionages leading to a series of cyberattacks against US State Department officials over the past month.

It is possible that cyberespionage is becoming the tool of seeking the type of influence that Iranian hardliners hoped that that country's nuclear program will eventually provide.

According to diplomatic and law enforcement officials who are familiar with the investigation Iranian hackers over the past month identified individual State Department officials who focus on Iran and the Middle East and broke into their email and social media accounts. The State Department became aware of the compromises when Facebook told the victims that the state-sponsored hackers compromised their accounts.

Iran’s cyberskills are not yet equal to those of Russia or China but the attack against the State Department by using the social media accounts of young government employees to gain access to their friends across the administration is a focus that was not seen before.

Iranians have been less destructive than they could be, but they are getting far more aggressive in cyberespionage, which they know is less likely it will prompt a response from the United States.

Iranian hackers have been responsible for a series of powerful attacks against American banks that took their websites offline as well as a destructive attack on Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, that replaced data on employee machines with an image of a burning American flag. American government officials also blame Iran for a similarly destructive attack at RasGas, the Qatari natural gas giant,and for an attack on Sands Casino in Las Vegas, where a large number of computers were destroyed.

Last year Iranians began using cyberattacks for espionage rather than for destruction and disruption. From May 2014 Iranian hackers were targeting Iranian dissidents and later policy makers,senior military personnel and defense contractors in the United States, England and Israel.

The attacks were basic “spear phishing” attempts, in which attackers tried to lure their victims to click on a malicious link, in this case by impersonating members of the news media.
Iranian hackers were successful in more than a quarter of their attempts. The number of such attacks reached its climax in May just ahead of the nuclear talks in Vienna in July and reached more than 1,500 attempts.

In the months before the talks, Iran’s hackers began probing critical infrastructure networks in what appeared reconnaissance for cyberattacks with the objective of causing physical damage but in June and July as American and Iranian negotiators gathered in Vienna to agree a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, attacks against targets in the United States stopped. Instead of this, Iran started targeting victims in Israel as well as members of Daesh in July as the militant group began expanding territory across Iraq.

Then in August just two weeks after the nuclear accord was reached, the trickle of cyberattacks against the group’s usual targets resumed against included 1600 individuals from scholars, scientists, chief executives and ministry officials to education institutes, journalists and human rights activists. If facebook last month had not decided to use a new alert system to notify users when facebook's security team believed state-sponsored hackers had hijacked their accounts, and US State Department officials began to see a troubling new message pop up on their facebook accounts, it is possible that the victims didn't learn of the compromises.