Washington, Mar 24 (EFE).– U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday announced an investigation of seven Iranian hackers, who have been charged with attacking the U.S. financial system and a small dam in New York at the behest of the government in Tehran.

“The attacks were relentless, systematic and widespread,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a press conference at the Justice Department. “They threatened our economic well-being and our ability to compete fairly in the global marketplace, both of which are directly linked to our national security.”

Between the end of 2011 and mid-2013, the U.S. financial system was the target of a “coordinated, large-scale” campaign of attacks that cost the victims tens of millions of dollars, Lynch said.

In the attacks, the servers of 46 financial institutions registered higher traffic than normal for 176 days, causing interruptions in online services, and hundreds of thousands of Americans could not access their bank accounts online, the AG said.

The Department of Justice identified the seven hackers as Ahmad Fathi, 37; Hamid Firoozi, 34; Amin Shokohi, 25; Sadegh Ahmadzadegan, 23; Omid Ghaffarinia, 25; Sina Keissar 25, and Nader Saedi, 26.

According to the DoJ, the Iranians were employees of the ITSecTeam (ITSEC) and Mersad Company, both based in Iran, and they allegedly acted in the name of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Revolutionary Guards, that country’s largest military body.

It is interesting to note that the attacks took place in the wake of the discovery of the Stuxnet virus, which is widely believed to have been a joint United States/Israel act of cyber warfare against Iranian nuclear plants.

FBI director James B. Comey said that his agency will find the people behind the cyber-attacks and will hold them responsible, wherever they are and whoever they are, adding that the accused are not in the United States and thus cannot be brought to trial at present.

The government of Barack Obama has made cyber-security one of its priorities, and in recent months judicial proceedings against hackers have multiplied. EFE