Rafe Pilling

Rafe Pilling appears in Iran’s cyberwar on American banks as the Sophos expert interviewed by Stephanie Hughes about Iran-linked cyber threats to American banks. He explains the 2011-2013 bank attacks as distributed denial-of-service incidents that used compromised computers to overwhelm banking websites with traffic.

Pilling also broadens the episode beyond bank outages. He describes Iran-Linked Cyber Operations as having evolved toward phishing, vulnerability scanning, Cyber Data Theft and Leak Operations, and Industrial Control System Cyber Risk, while arguing that banks are probably better prepared for DDoS campaigns than health care organizations and other sensitive-data holders.

Connections

• Sophos - employer and cybersecurity context.
• Marketplace Tech and Stephanie Hughes - episode and interviewer.
• Iran-Linked Cyber Operations, Banking DDoS Resilience, Cyber Data Theft and Leak Operations, and Industrial Control System Cyber Risk - main concepts he explains.
• Iran, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Ministry of Intelligence and Security - actor and sponsor context in the episode.