Capital One, BB&T and HSBC all reported they had been targeted last week, in the ongoing run of attacks in which hackers keep moving from one bank to another overwhelming their websites with heavy loads of traffic to block customers from getting access.
There have been no reports of any efforts to destroy bank records or steal deposits, though banks warned they might not know for sure if that happened for some months. The attacks appear to have simply been annoyances. They only last a day or two at any individual bank.
The source of the attacks is not known, but Iran is broadly suspected. While the attacks are not very sophisticated, they are very large scale and beyond the capability of ordinary homebound hackers. Analysts generally believe a government would have to be involved to mount attacks on such a scale—and Iran is the one government being pointed to.
Two weeks ago, Panetta gave a speech in which he claimed the ability to track attacks back to the originating hackers. He mentioned the bank attacks, which were then underway. But he has not attributed the bank attacks to anyone—neither in that speech nor since.
The Wall Street Journal said the Pentagon had tracked the attacks back to Iran. But The New York Times said the Pentagon had no such proof and merely suspected Iran as the logical source of such an attack. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.)
A group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters claimed responsibility for the attacks in a posting on the website pastebin.com, saying they were a response to the recent video posted on YouTube insulting the Prophet Mohammad.