Iranians were behind the cyber attack on Las Vegas Sands

Last year’s hacking attack on a Sheldon Adelson Las Vegas Sands land casino in the USA (see previous  reports) was the work of Iranians, the Washington Post reported Thursday, quoting a top US intelligence official.

Given Adelson’s voluble and financial support for Israel, his business would appear to be a logical enough target for the Iranians.

The allegation against the Iranians came from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that the cyberattack followed the hacking of Sony Corporation by North Korea in November last year, marking the first cyber-assaults on the US from nation-states, as opposed to individual hackers.

“While both of these nations have lesser technical capabilities in comparison to Russia and China, these destructive attacks demonstrate that Iran and North Korea are motivated and unpredictable cyber-actors,” Clapper said.

Clapper is also worried about Russia, revealing that in his view the cyber-threat from that nation is more severe than previously thought, and presumably more formidable. And he felt that more of this sort of selective cyber-attack could well be in store for the United States in the future rather than one massive onslaught aimed at crippling the nation’s infrastructure.

“Rather than a ‘cyber-Armageddon’ scenario that debilitates the entire US infrastructure, we envision something different,” Clapper said. “We foresee an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber-attacks from a variety of sources over time, which will impose cumulative costs on US economic competitiveness and national security.”

Looking ahead on the type of threat the nation may face, Clapper said that attacks may include “supply-chain operations to insert compromised hardware or software.”

On the bright side, he reported that detection technology has improved so that attackers can no longer assume that their identities or location will stay concealed.

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