New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer applauded the U.S. Justice Department Thursday for indicting seven people with ties to the Iranian regime after they allegedly committed a series of cybercrimes, including the infiltration of a New York dam.
“Everything from our banks to our critical infrastructure are at risk for damaging cyber-attacks like never before, and we must step up our counter-hacking game ASAP to deal with threats from places like Iran and would be terrorists,” Sen. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.
“As the Iranian attack on the Westchester dam shows, a particularly neglected area is critical infrastructure—dams and power grids—and we must increase our focus on protecting them,” he added.
Gov. Cuomo, a Democrat, also congratulated the department in a statement and said his administration was working to shore up New York’s infrastructure against cyberattack.
“The number of cyber attacks in the United States continues to rise and New York State is not immune to this threat,” Cuomo said, according to POLITICO.
“My administration has made cyber security a top priority and implemented new measures to safeguard our critical infrastructure in New York State.”
The Obama administration on Thursday announced the indictment of seven Iranian hackers for a coordinated campaign of cyber-attacks on dozens of U.S. banks and the New York dam from 2011 to 2013, Reuters reported.
The indictment, filed in a federal court in New York City, described the suspects, who live in Iran, as “experienced computer hackers” believed to have been working on behalf of the Iranian regime.