US, Mideast Expecting More Iranian Cyberattacks
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON/TEHRAN/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – The United States is preparing for massive Iranian cyberattacks in retaliation for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas, several sources say.
Iranian hackers are also waging an espionage campaign targeting Iran’s rivals across the Middle East and attacking key defense and intelligence agencies, observed Israeli-American cybersecurity company Check Point.
That has added to concerns among U.S. federal agencies. They are reportedly on heightened alert and hope that new cyber defenses they created after Russia invaded Ukraine will help to accommodate multiple threats from Iran, Worthy News monitored.
The director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, told the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that online threats are rapidly increasing.
“The cyber targeting of American interests and critical infrastructure that we already see conducted by Iran and non-state actors alike, we can expect to get worse if the conflict expands, as will the threat of kinetic attacks,” Wray said this week.
Iran backs a network of sophisticated cyber operators akin to those that work with Russia and China, political news website Politico wrote. They can tunnel into government systems or turn off companies’ entire computer networks. “Tehran has launched attacks in the U.S. in the past, but the risk is far higher and more serious in light of the conflict in Gaza,” Politico commented.
Over the past year, hackers already got experience outside the U.S., striking countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan in a monthslong campaign linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the report by Check Point said.
IRANIAN ATTACKS
“The Iranian hackers appeared to gain access to emails from an array of targets, including government staff members, militaries, telecommunications companies, and financial organizations,” said the report obtained by The New York Times newspaper.
“The primary purpose of this operation is espionage,” security experts at Check Point wrote in the report, adding that the approach was “notably more sophisticated compared to previous activities” linked to Iran.
Iran’s minister of defense, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said last week in a speech to his country’s defense officials that given the current “complex security situation” in the Middle East, Iran had to redefine its national defenses beyond its geographic borders.
Iranian media quoted him as saying that meant utilizing new warfare strategies to defend Iran, “including the use of space, cyberspace,” and other ways. “Our enemies know that if they make one mistake, the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond with force,” General Ashtiani said.
Iran has been supporting several groups carrying out terror attacks against Israel, including Hamas, which, like Tehran, seeks the destruction of the Jewish state.
While Israel and Iran had been engaged in a covert war by land, sea, air, and computer, the targets were usually military- or government-related. Yet recently, the cyberwar reportedly widened, with millions of ordinary people in Iran and Israel finding themselves caught in the crossfire of a cyber war between their countries
Iran has accused Israel of a hack that took down a portion of the country’s gas stations in 2021, leaving motorists without fuel.
STANDING OUT
In Israel, hundreds of thousands of people panicked when they learned that their private details were stolen from an LGBTQ dating site and were uploaded on social media, one of a series of attacks by cybergroups associated with Iran.
The latest cyberattacks stand out, according to Check Point, for the way Iranians redesigned malware. The code had striking similarities to a program used to attack the Albanian government last year, Check Point said.
That hack, in which a large amount of sensitive police data was taken and posted online, led Albania to break off diplomatic relations with Iran, which officially denied it was responsible.
The malware exploits a known vulnerability in outdated versions of Microsoft Windows servers, The New York Times reported.
After infecting a vulnerable computer, the program burrows deep into the network, in some cases for months, quietly gathering and transmitting data back to Iran, according to experts.
The United States and other nations are now rushing to see how much the Islamic country knows and where it will strike at a time of growing insecurity in the Middle East.
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