The US is bracing for cyberattacks Iran could launch in retaliation for the re-imposition of sanctions this week by US President Donald Trump, cybersecurity and intelligence experts say.
Concern over that cyber threat has been rising since May, when Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, under which the US and other world powers eased economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. The experts say the threat would intensify following Washington’s move Tuesday to re-impose economic restrictions on Tehran.
“While we have no specific threats, we have seen an increase in chatter related to Iranian threat activity over the past several weeks,” said Priscilla Moriuchi, director of strategic threat development at Recorded Future, a global real-time cyber threat intelligence company. The Massachusetts-based company predicted back in May that the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement would provoke a cyber response from the Iranian government within two to four months.
US intelligence agencies have singled out Iran as one of the main foreign cyber threats facing America, along with Russia, China and North Korea. A wave of attacks that US authorities blamed on Iran between 2012 and 2014 targeted banks and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. They also targeted but failed to penetrate critical infrastructure.
“Iran’s cyber activities against the world have been the most consequential, costly and aggressive in the history of the internet, more so than Russia. … The Iranians are destructive cyber operators,” Roule said, adding that Iranian hackers have, at times, impersonated Israeli and Western cyber security firm websites to harvest log-in information.
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