On 10/2, Mark Clayton reported for The Christian Science Monitor on those cyberattacks against the websites of prominent U.S. banks. Those attacks were of the DDOS variety, so there is no indication the hackers actually got into the bank’s networks. Although some news outlets pointed the finger at Iran (or “some state”), a hacktivist group called the “Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam” took responsibility, claiming the attacks were in response to the Innocence of the Muslims trailer.
However, Clayton writes that the claims by Izz ad-din Al qassam might just be a false flag operation. In dissecting the attack, Clayton explained that there were two separate assaults: a small DDOS, and a much larger and more sophisticated DDOS “by an entity controlling a relatively small number of powerful, high-speed Internet Web servers.” The first attack was an effort to veil the second.
Clayton goes on to say that someone hacked into about 300 to 400 servers, turned them into a botnet, and then used that botnet to swamp the banks. All of this indicates that it was probably not a hacktivist attack, but rather, a state sponsored attack.
Check out Mark Clayton’s article for The Christian Science Monitor here.
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