FollowMany U.S. utility companies have reported that their data was hacked from a latest wave of sophisticated cyber attacks. According to the New York Times, the Federal officials at US that have been investigating the issue with internet security firms and have claimed hackers are mainly aimed attacks towards major energy producers of the country.
Officials feel that the hack attacks have been brought about to cause catastrophic failure. They have come to a conclusion that the attacks have been traced to Iran by the security experts.
Hackers have targeted their attacks on oil, gas and electricity companies. Security officials believe that the attack was mainly aimed at destroying all the data from these companies and control the machinery which is used for operating control systems.
The security officials have been investigating the attacks since several months. It is only this month that the Department of Homeland Security expressed that the attacks were suspected to come from the Middle East. Now the officials have zeroed in on Iran but the evidence are not strong enough to conclude that Iran is the country that has caused the cyber attack.
Experts are of the view that Iran was the country that caused several cyber attacks on well-known financial institutions last year. The attack had caused many banks to go offline which resulted in loss of revenue of millions of U.S. dollars. Previous year’s attacks were caused by less sophisticated DDoS threat.
Until now, none of the threats have been successful but the attacks have been so threatening that the US Department of Homeland security has issued an alert. Last year, the world’s largest oil producing company called Aramco which is a Saudi-based firm was attacked by a very lethal PC virus. The attack is being compared with the recent attacks on US utility companies. Security officials had concluded that the attack on Aramco company and Qatar based RasGas was done by Iran.
It is believed that the monetary sanctions placed on Iran can be the reason why Iran has carried out the recent cyber attacks. Recent reports have claimed all the attacks that have been done by Iran in the last 18 months show that the country is consistently improving in hacking skills. Some are of the view that Iran has carried out the recent attacks because Iran’s uranium enrichment center was attacked by Stuxnet virus. It was later reported that both Israel and America had carried out the cyber attack on Iran in order to slow Iran’s progress in producing enriched uranium.
