The United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is the nuclear energy branch of the Department of Energy (DOE).  Their critical operations oversee a number of sensitive nuclear-related missions, including weaponry, nonproliferation, nuclear security, navy operations, counterterrorism and defense.  A recent announcement by the Iranian hacker group Parastoo directed its sights on the NNSA in a Pre-Release Statement titled “Parastoo Attacks NNSA, Pre-Release”. 

Parastoo is an activist Anti-Israel hacker group that has claimed responsibility in some high-profile hacks and releases of compromised information.  Back in late November, it was announced that they had released email addresses belonging to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  In February they announced their responsibility for the IHS Jane’s attack which compromised their systems to the tune of 14 TB of stolen data over a number of months, and openly boasting of the lax security obstacles they ran into during their exploits.  IHS Jane’s later said that at the time of the investigation, the information they knew of that had been released was public domain information, and not classified.  Parastoo made very specific threats of drone hack warfare that they could use and target troops and the VP of the US.  Parastoo later turned up in the mystery drone conversation, but little has come up other than those claims they released at the time.

That brings up a good point.  Is Parastoo a legitimate threat?  Are they troll-hackers?  Sure they’ve released some emails, some quite sensitive (though not classified) information, and they’ve continued to make claims that haven’t produced any tangible events.   More on that later.

This statement as I mentioned targets the NNSA.  In it they release data that they say is not from classified materials, perhaps it came from the Jane’s breach?  It’s hard to say.  What we do know is that it appears to lay out general information about nuclear arsenal locations around the world.  They claim these arsenals are managed by U.S. European Command and U.S. Strategic Command for the ready and practical use by U.S. and allied air forces.  From bomb counts, explosion yield variants, to unit specifications there is quite a bit of information.  Parastoo has released the information to “help future OPS against the global corruption and hypocrisy”.  Parastoo claims that they have successfully penetrated a top secret link operated by the NNSA, and suggested that future releases are on the way from that event.  That reportedly includes various documents as well as high-resolution satellite images of every single one of those sites, and images of the site they penetrated.

9. WHAT IS NEXT?

PARASTOO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PENETRATED A TOP SECRET LINK OPERATING BY NNSA IN CENTRAL ASIA WHERE URANIUM AND PLUTONIUM MATERIALS TO ADVANCE THE ABOVE MENTIONED ADVANCEMENTS ARE BEING EXFILTRATED . THIS MESSAGE WAS A PLATFORM FOR OUR FUTURE RELEASES IN THIS REGARD . IN OUR NEXT MESSAGE ON THIS SUBJECT WE WILL RELEASE THE NNSA DOX IN ADDITION TO HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGES OF EVERY SINGLE SITES , PLUS THE PENETRATED NNSA STATION THAT CLAIMS IS DOING AN INTERNATIONAL DUTY TO “PROTECT” NUCLEAR PEACE BY REMOVING THE SENSITIVE MATERIALS FROM HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS . A CLEAR HEADS UP BEFORE EVERY OPERATION IS AN ESSENTIAL PARASTOO POLICY . REASON IS CLEARLY KNOWN TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCE . YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS .EXPECT US . 

A better question would be to wonder what comes next for the NNSA and other entities that deal with these hacker threats.  According to Parastoo, these documents are already taken, and they are very specific as to what it partially contains.  Thus far, the NNSA nor the Pentagon have made a public statement on anything like this so we will have to wait and see what happens here.  Back in 2006 the NNSA was hacked and the event went unreported for nine months.  Will history repeat itself or is the Parastoo threat the work of an attention-seeking lone wolf hacker?  They are very motivated, they clearly have some valued and scary information, they are clearly aware of events that happen here in the US, and they have shown success in releasing information in the past.  Yet here is Parastoo – ‘they’ type in all caps, they want attention you see, they ask for others to help them carry out actions against their targets, they invoke Anonymous in their statements, they basically say we are going to release information, oh and that drone thing, we helped out with that.  I don’t think anyone in an official role is looking past this group, but thus far the fact that we haven’t seen any major outage or event is quite telling that there are other more serious cyberthreats that are happening right now.  That’s the way it reads.