Malware - search results

We reported last year:

The government treats copyright infringers as terrorists, and swat teams have been deployed against them. See this, this, this and this.

As the executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School notes:

This administration … publishes a newsletter about its efforts with language that compares copyright infringement to terrorism.

The American government is using copyright laws to crack down on political dissent just like China and Russia.

We noted last month that the “cyber-security” laws have very little to do with security.

The Verge reported last month:

In the State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama announced a sweepingexecutive order implementing new national cybersecurity measures, opening the door for intelligence agencies to share more information about suspected “cyber threats” with private companies that oversee the nation’s “critical infrastructure.” The order is voluntary, giving companies the choice of whether or not they want to receive the information, and takes effect in four months, by June 12.

***

“Cyber threats cover a wide range of malicious activity that can occur through cyberspace,” wrote Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, in an email to The Verge. “Such threats include web site defacement, espionage,theft of intellectual property, denial of service attacks, and destructive malware.”

***

“The EO [executive order] relies on the definition of critical infrastructure found in the Homeland Security Act of 2002,” Hayden wrote.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (PDF), passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, was what created the Department of Homeland Security. At that time, the US was still reeling from the attacks and Congress sought to rapidly bolster the nation’s defenses, including “critical infrastructure” as part of its definition of “terrorism.” As the act states: “The term ‘terrorism’ means any activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources…”

But again, that act doesn’t exactly spell out which infrastructure is considered “critical,” instead pointing to the definition as outlined in a 2001 bill, also passed in response to September 11, which reads:

“The term “critical infrastructure” means systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

This is the same exact definition that was originally provided in the president’s cybersecurity order as originally published on Tuesday, meaning that the White House appears to be relying to some degree on circular reasoning when it comes to that definition. Some in Washington, including the right-leaning think tank The Heritage Foundation, are worried that the definition is too broad and “could be understood to include systems normally considered outside the cybersecurity conversation, such as agriculture.”

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security, which is one of the agencies that will be sharing information on cyber threats thanks to the order, includes 18 different industriesin its own label of “critical infrastructure,” from agriculture to banking to national monuments. There’s an argument to be made that including such a broad and diverse swath of industries under the blanket term “critical” is reasonable given the overall increasing dependence of virtually all businesses on the internet for core functions. But even in that case, its unclear how casting such a wide net would be helpful in defending against cyber threats, especially as there is a limited pool of those with the expertise and ability to do so.

It’s not just intellectual property.  The government is widely using anti-terror laws to help giant businesses … and to crush those who speak out against their abusive practices, labeling anyone who speaks out as a potential bad guy.

Published time: February 27, 2013 21:35

The governments of at least 20 countries may have fallen victim to a sophisticated new cyber-attack. Security experts believe the hackers are attempting to steal political intelligence.

The governments of at least 20 countries may have fallen victim to a sophisticated new cyber-attack. Security experts believe the hackers are attempting to steal political intelligence.

Computer security firms Kaspersky Lab and CrySyS Lab discovered that the malware, dubbed "MiniDuke," targeted government computers in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal and Romania along with think tanks, research institutes and healthcare providers in the United States.

“The technical indicators from our analysis show this is a new type of threat actor that hasn't been seen before,” Kurt Baumgartner, a senior security researcher with Kaspersky Lab, told RT.

Although experts avoid speculating on who the attackers may be, Baumgartner clarified that “based on the target victims and the functionality of the malware” the objective of MiniDuke’s authors is “to collect geopolitical intelligence.”

The threat operates on low-level code to stay hidden, and uses Twitter and Google to get instructions and updates. It allegedly infected PCs when ‘victims’ opened a cleverly disguised Adobe PDF attachment to an email.

“The high level of encryption in the malware and the flexible system it used to communicate with the C2 via Twitter and Google indicates this was a strategically planned operation,” Baumgartner said.

The PDF documents were specifically tailored to their targets, according to the researchers. The attachments referred to highly relevant topics subjects like “foreign policy,” a “human rights seminar,” or “NATO membership plans."

When the files were opened, MiniDuke would install itself on the user's computer.

So far it is only known that the malware then connects to two servers, one in Panama and one in Turkey, but security researchers say there are no clear indications of who was behind the online attacks.

According to Karpersky Lab the spyware was written in “assembler language,” a low-level code where each statement corresponds to a specific command, and is very small in size, only 20 kilobytes. Assembler language codes are written specifically for each system they are meant to attack, as opposed to higher-level codes, which can infect multiple types of technologies.

The way the malware was created and used indicates that the attackers “have knowledge from the elite, ‘old school’  type of malicious programmers who were extremely effective at creating highly complex viruses in the past,” Baumgartner says. “MiniDuke’s attackers have combined these skills with the newly advanced sandbox-evading exploits to target high-profile victims, which is unique and something we haven’t seen before.”

MiniDuke is a three-stage attack, technology news and information website, Arstechnica, explains. First it tricks a victim into opening an authentic-looking PDF document, and then infected machines start using Twitter or Google “to retrieve encrypted instructions showing them where to report for additional backdoors.”

"These accounts were created by MiniDuke’s Command and Control (C2) operators and the tweets maintain specific tags labeling encrypted URLs for the backdoors,” Kaspersky Lab said in a statement. “Based on the analysis, it appears that the MiniDuke’s creators provide a dynamic backup system that also can fly under the radar - if Twitter isn’t working or the accounts are down, the malware can use Google Search to find the encrypted strings to the next C2.”

Stages two and three are hidden inside a GIF image file which is downloaded from the command server and “disguised as pictures that appear on a victim’s machine.”

Eugene Kaspersky, founder and chief executive of Kaspersky Lab, compared the highly-advanced MiniDuke to “malicious programming from the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s”, saying it has the potential to be "extremely dangerous" because it was an "elite, old-school" attack.

"This is a very unusual cyber-attack," the statement emailed to RT read.

"I remember this style of malicious programming from the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. I wonder if these types of malware writers, who have been in hibernation for more than a decade, have suddenly awoken and joined the sophisticated group of threat actors active in the cyber world. These elite, “old school” malware writers were extremely effective in the past at creating highly complex viruses," Kaspersky's CEO added.

Neither Kaspersky nor CrySyS is disclosing what the malware does once it takes hold of a victim until they have had a chance to privately warn infected organizations, Arstechnica reported.

According to the technology news and information website, at least 60 victims have been affected. Kaspersky has identified at least 23 affected countries, including the US, Hungary, Ukraine, Belgium, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Germany, Israel, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK, and Ireland.

Revelations about the new malware come two weeks after Silicon Valley security firm FireEye discovered security flaws in Reader and Acrobat software.

European police have busted a cybercriminal ring that extorted millions of euros with a computer virus that locked machines up and demanded a ransom. They also posed as police, accusing victims of viewing child pornography and infringing copyrights.

­Eleven suspects were detained in an operation by Europol and Spanish police, police reported on Wednesday. A 27-year-old Russian who allegedly created and distributed the virus was detained in the United Arab Emirates in December, while on vacation. Ten others were detained in Spain last week, including Russians, Ukrainians and Georgians, Spanish police said.

"This is the first major success of its kind against a very new phenomenon that we have only identified in the last two years," Europol Director Rob Wainwright said at a news conference at the Spanish Interior Ministry in Madrid.

The cyber-gang used so-called ‘ransomware,’ a type of malware that locks down an infected computer until a ransom is paid. This particular operation targeted users with false accusations from national and international police forces, and occasionally organizations defending copyright holders. A message would demand payment of a fine of 100 euro ($134) over alleged wrongdoings, including searching for child pornography, visiting terrorist websites and illegal file-sharing.

"It used the idiom and logo of each specific police service," Wainwright said. "Even Europol and my own name have been used to defraud citizens."

Cybersecurity expert have found at least 48 variations of the malware, the oldest dating back to 2005, which used different logos and accusations. They also believe the gang had specifically targeted users who may have been involved in illegal online activities, making their ransom claims more plausible.

Police believe that about 3 percent of those targeted actually paid the ransom – enough to make the criminal operation quite lucrative, netting them millions annually. In Spain alone, they are believed to have collected more than 1 million euros ($1.3 million), according to Spanish police.

The gang operated in six countries when police first detected their activities two years ago. As the investigation proceeded, they expanded to as many as 30 nations, mostly in Europe.

Spanish police seized hardware and more than 200 credit cards in the raid. They said the suspects also had 26,000 euros ($35,000) in cash with them.

Of the 10 suspects detained, six have been charged with laundering, fraud and involvement in a criminal organization; the four others remain under investigation. The police offered no detail on the prosecution of the alleged author of the malware, who is also believed to be the gang’s leader.

Throughout his tenure, Obama governed lawlessly for the monied interests that own him. He’s waged no-holds-barred war on humanity.

Strategy includes homeland tyranny, fear-mongering, saber rattling, hot wars, proxy ones, drone ones, domestic political ones, geopolitical ones, financial ones, anti-populist ones, sanctions, subversion, sabotage, targeted assassinations, mass murder, cyberwar, and more.

In May 2009, Obama prioritized cybersecurity. He called cyber-threats “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.”

“America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity.”

He ordered a top-to-bottom review. A Cyberspace Policy Review report followed. He waged cyberwar on Iran. He did so cooperatively with Israel.

In spring 2010, Iranian intelligence discovered Stuxnet malware contamination. The computer virus infected its Bushehr nuclear facility. At the time, operations were halted indefinitely.

Israel was blamed. Washington was involved. Had the facility gone online infected, Iran’s entire electrical power grid could have been shut down.

A more destructive virus called Flame malware is known. Internet security experts say it’s 20 times more harmful than Stuxnet. Iran’s military-industrial complex is targeted. So is its nuclear program. Maximum disruption is planned.

Obama supports draconian cybersecurity bills. Passage threatens constitutional freedoms.

Targeted assassinations eliminate America’s enemies. Lawless domestic spying is policy. So is warrantless wiretapping. Americans are as vulnerable as others.

Obama’s waging war on humanity. He’s doing it multiple ways. Last October, he signed an executive order. It expanded military authority. It authorized cyberattacks. It redefined defense. Doing so lawlessly legitimizes aggression.

In November, Presidential Policy Directive 20 followed. It’s secret. It set guidelines for confronting cyberspace threats.

Last fall, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” It could “cause physical destruction and loss of life,” he said. It could “paralyze and shock the nation and create a new profound sense of vulnerability.”

US officials never lack for hyperbole. Fear-mongering is longstanding policy. So are Big Lies, false flags, and other pretexts for wars, other military actions, and disruptive ones.

Cyberwar capability adds to America’s arsenal. Preemption adds another dirty tactic.

In early February, US media reports headlined stepped-up cyberwar. Preemption is prioritized. Nation states, organizations, and individuals are fair game.

US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) has full operational control. It’s a cyber hit squad. It’s part of the US Strategic Command.

It’s based at Fort Meade, MD. General Keith Alexander serves as National Security Agency (NSA) director and US Cyber Command head.

The New York Times cited a secret legal review. It affords Obama sweeping preemptive cyberattack powers.

It permits him “to order a preemptive strike if the United States detects (allegedly) credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad.”

His word alone is policy. Corroborating evidence isn’t needed. Efforts to protect classified and proprietary information are increasing.

The Washington Post said wireless and technology giants are battling over a plan to create super Wi-Fi networks.

The Wall Street Journal said Google, Microsoft and Amazon are competing to control cloud computing business.

The Christian Science Monitor said preemptive cyberwar entered America’s arsenal. It “nugded up along side other” approved tactics and techniques.

New policies govern how intelligence agencies work. They’ve been unrestrained before. They’ll have greater powers now.

The New York Times said they’ll be able to “carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States and, if the president approves, attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code – even if there is no declared war.”

Rules of engagement are classified. Effectively there are none. Cyber-warriors are freewheeling. They’re unrestrained.

They’ll operate anywhere globally. China is a target of choice. It’s America’s main economic and geopolitical competitor.

An unnamed US official said new cyberwar strategy is “far more aggressive than anything” used or recommended before. The gloves are off. Anything goes.

Major disruptions can occur without firing a shot. Military and/or civilian power grids can be crippled. So can financial systems and communications networks.

Another unnamed US official said cyberweapons are so powerful that “they should be unleashed only by” presidential order. Exceptions would be tactical strikes.

Examples include disabling command and control as well as ground radar ahead of conventional strikes. At the same time, most cyberoperations are presidential prerogatives.

Expect Obama to take full advantage. Extrajudicial operations are prioritized. Rule of law principles are spurned. Operational procedures have been in development for over two years.

They’re headlined now. They coming out when cyberattacks more often target US companies and critical infrastructure. An unnamed US power station was crippled for weeks.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal reported cyberattacks. Obama prioritizes preemption. Doing so has no legal standing. Self-defense alone is justified. Acting on suspicions without evidence is aggression.

New rules serve Washington. Lawyers get marching orders. They’re well paid to subvert accepted legal standards. Doing so doesn’t change them.

What constitutes “reasonable and proportionate force” resides in the eye of the aggressor. New guidelines exclude the Pentagon from defending US companies or individuals without presidential authority.

Doing so is Homeland Security’s prerogative. The FBI has investigatory authority. Cybersecurity legislation remains stalled in Congress. Expect stepped up efforts for passage.

Doing so will more greatly comprise freedom. Full-blown tyranny approaches. It’s a hair’s breadth away. Whistleblowers are targeted. Dissent is endangered.

There’s no place to hide. Big Brother’s expanding exponentially. Cyber-preemption adds greater police state power.

On February 3, a Washington Post editorial headlined “Cyberwar, out of the shadows,” saying:

US Cyber Command is expanding exponentially. Doing so “is indicative of how conflict is moving toward center stage for the military, a domain similar to land, sea, air and outer space.”

It’s heading America toward unchallenged dominance.

In May 2000, the Pentagon’s Joint Vision 2020 called for “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary.

Doing so includes nuclear weapons use preemptively. Non-nuclear countries and adversaries are fair game.

Cyber Command includes:

(1) “Combat mission forces” cooperatively with military units.

(2) “Protection forces” to defend Pentagon networks.

(3) “National mission forces” to head off threats to critical infrastructure. They’ll operate outside America. They’ll function anywhere if authorized. They’ll strike US adversaries preemptively.

Targeting cuts both ways. Incoming attacks can precede or follow US ones. Secrecy is prioritized but compromised. Spies have clever ways of doing it.

Rules of engagement aren’t clear. Public information is limited. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Policy need generous doses.

“If conflict in cyberspace is underway,” said the Post, “then it is important to sustain support for the resources and decisions to fight it, and that will require more candor.”

Expect little forthcoming from the most secretive administration in US history. Obama’s first term prioritized homeland repression and lawless aggression. Imagine what he has in mind for term two.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/obama-declares-global-cyberwar/

Blackberry 10

Email    Print    Share

Posted on Feb 1, 2013

Cam Cardow, Cagle Cartoons, The Ottawa Citizen

More Below the Ad

TAGS: blackberry blackberry 10 cartoon cellular phones kitchen sink smartphone technology

Related Entries

• 

  Why CBS Can’t Be Trusted With the News

• 

  Santa Tracker 2012: NORAD vs. Google

• 

  How to Avoid an Unwanted Vacation From the Internet

• 

  Will Wonders Never Cease?

Email to a friend

Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.

New and Improved Comments

If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. Still having problems? Let us know. If you find yourself moderated, take a moment to review our comment policy.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Picture by Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research & Analysis Team

A sophisticated cyber-espionage network targeting the world's diplomatic, government and research agencies has been uncovered by the Kaspersky Lab, whose experts say the malware's complexity could rival that of the notorious Flame virus.

­The system's targets include a wide range of countries, with the primary focus on Eastern Europe, former Soviet republics and Central Asia – although many in Western Europe and North America are also on the list.

In addition to attacking traditional computer workstations, Rocra – a shortened name for Red October, the name given the network by the Kaspersky team – can steal data from smartphones, dump network equipment configurations, snatch files from removable disk drives, including those that had been erased, and scan through email databases and local network FTP servers.  

Unlike other well-known highly automated cyber-espionage campaigns like Flame and Gauss, the Rorca's attacks all appear to be carefully chosen. Each operation is apparently driven by the configuration of the victim’s hardware and software, native language and even habit of document usage.

The information extracted from infected networks is often used to gain entry into additional systems. For example, stolen credentials were shown to be compiled in a list for use when attackers needed to guess passwords or phrases.

The hackers behind the network have created more than 60 domain names and several server hosting locations in different countries – the majority of those known being in Germany and Russia – which worked as proxies in order to hide the location of the “mothership” control server.

That server's location remains unknown.

Experts have uncovered over 1,000 modules belonging to 30 different module categories. While Rocra seems to have been designed to execute one-time tasks sent by the hackers’ servers, a number of modules were constantly present in the system executing persistent tasks. For example, retrieving information about a phone, its contact list, call history, calendar, SMS messages and even browsing history as soon as an iPhone or a Nokia phone is connected to the system.

The hackers' primary objective is to gather information and documents that compromised governments, corporations or other organizations and agencies. In addition to focusing on diplomatic and governmental agencies around the world, the hackers also attacked energy and nuclear groups and trade and aerospace targets.

No details have been given so far as to who the attackers could be. However, there is strong technical evidence to indicate that the attackers have Russophone origins, as Russian words including slang have been used in the source code commentaries. Many of the known attacks have taken place in Russian-speaking countries.

Click to enlarge

The hackers designed their own authentic and complicated piece of software, which has its own unique modular architecture of malicious extensions, info-stealing modules and backdoor Trojans. The malware includes several extensions and malicious files designed to quickly adjust to different system configurations while remaining able to grab information from infected machines.

These included a ‘resurrection’ module, which allowed hackers to gain access to infected machines using alternative communications channels and an encoded spy module, stealing information from different cryptographic systems such as Acid Cryptofiler, which is known to be used by organizations such as NATO, the European Parliament and the European Commission since 2011.

The first instances of Red October malware were discovered in October 2012, but it has been infecting computers since at least 2007, according to Kaspersky. The Kaspersky Lab worked with a number of international organizations while conducting the investigation including the US, Romanian and Belorusian Computer Emergency Readiness Teams. 

The EU has attempted to counter the huge rise in cyber-espionage by launching the European Cybercrime Center, which opened on Friday.

Picture by Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research & Analysis Team

Cyber security analysts work to defend a network during a drill at a Department of Homeland Security cyber security defense lab at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho (Reuters/Jim Urquhart)

Cyberattacks against the United States’ critical infrastructure are increasing, but even the Department of Homeland Security is reporting that the country is ill-prepared to respond.

America’s cyberdefense situation is in need of improvement, according at least to a newsletter published by the Homeland Security Department’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, the ICS-CERT Monitor [PDF].

In the late-2012 edition of the Monitor, cyber experts working for the United States government confirm that as attacks waged against America’s essential sectors are on the rise, the number of qualified personnel able to respond is hardly adequate.

Between October 1, 2011 and September of last year, ICE-CERT claims to have received and responded to 198 cyber incidents as reported by asset owners and industry partners. In an analysis of the report by CNN, they report that the figure for Fiscal Year 2012 is 52 percent larger than the year before.

Elsewhere in the Monitor, ICE-CERT quotes noted security expert Alan Paller as saying that there are no more than 20 individuals in the entire country that could counter a substantial attack against the States’ cyber infrastructure.

“Paller believes there are only 18 to 20 people in the whole country qualified to protect the nation’s infrastructure from a concerted cyberattack,” the Monitor says, quoting from a Wall Street Journal article published in November.

“That’s an incredible small number of people considering the hundreds of thousands of engineers working in the private, public and military sectors,” says the Journal.

Of those nearly 200 incidents reported to DHS, several resulted in successful break-ins. In one example given of a power generation facility in the US, the Monitor says DHS employees identified malware installed on their systems that were so sophisticated that they posed the possibility of a very real disaster to the plant’s control environment.

“Detailed analysis was conducted as these workstations had no backups, and an ineffective of failed cleanup would have significantly impaired their operations,” the report reads.

While The Monitor neglects to name individual companies that found malware and other attempted cyber-intrusions, the DHS says that the nation’s energy, water, communications and transportation sectors were all subject to attack during the last year. Also at risk, the Monitor reports, is America’s nuclear infrastructure, where at least 6 incidents were identified during a 12-month span.

Compared to recent years, the cyberassaults waged during 2012 demonstrate an alarming trend. While ICS-CERT identified 198 incidents last year, in 2009 that number was only nine.

"I believe that people will not truly get this until they see the physical implications of a cyberattack," former FBI cybercrime official Shawn Henry said last year, as quoted by CNN. "We knew about Osama bin Laden in the early '90s. After 9/11, it was a worldwide name. I believe that type of thing can and will happen in the cyber environment."

Leading figures in Washington have warned just as much, equating an eventual assault on the United States’ cyber-grid as being on par with national tragedies of historic proportions. In October, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the country was at risk of facing a “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” In December, former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnel said a “Cyber 9/11” should be imminent.

"We have had our 9/11 warning. Are we going to wait for the cyber equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Centers?" McConnell told Financial Times in an interview published last month.

"All of a sudden, the power doesn't work, there's no way you can get money, you can't get out of town, you can't get online, and banking, as a function to make the world work, starts to not be reliable," McConnell said. "Now, that is a cyber-Pearl Harbor, and it is achievable."

In the latest edition of The Monitor, the DHS acknowledges that one particular power company in the US was infected with a virus as recently as this October that damaged the facility’s turbine control system and around 10 computers connected to it. By the time the country’s cyber-experts identified and treated the issue, the facility suffered from three weeks of setbacks. In another instance noted in the report, a team of DHS researchers found 98,000 organizations within the United States that had Internet-facing devices that could easily be hijacked by hackers.

Cyberattacks against the United States’ energy sector accounted for 40 percent of all reported incidents last year, with the water sector targeted in around 30 separate attacks, the Monitor reports.

Only one banking or financial institution contacted the DHS about a possible cyberattack last year, but skyrocketing numbers suggest that assaults are likely to increase in Fiscal Year 2013. Just in the last few months, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Capital One have all been targeted by computer criminals.

"These attacks are representative of the longest persistent cyberattack on an industry sector in history – in fact, nearly every major commercial bank has been affected," Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware, tells CSO Online.

Anti-American hackers from Iran are believed responsible for the renewed series of attacks aimed at the computer of US banks, according to Washington sources. On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency has been approached by a number of US banks in hopes that they will be able to protect them against the increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks waged at the American financial sector.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations has dismissed allegations of the Iranian government being behind cyber attacks on the US banking system.

The mission said in a statement on Thursday that the Islamic Republic condemns any use of malware that target important service-providing institutes by violating the national sovereignty of states.

“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 statement said.

The US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has claimed that Iran has orchestrated cyber attacks on US financial institutions.

“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 Iranian mission’s statement noted.

KA/HN