Crossroads Blog | Institute National Security and Counterterrorism

Stuxnet, warfare

U.S. Congress voices concern over Iran cyber-threat: Haaretz

Natasha Mozgovaya reported for Haaretz on recents comments coming out of two House subcommittees about Iran's cyber capabilities.  According to the article, one House Rep. expressed concern that Iran would reverse engineer Stuxnet and use the virus against U.S. critical infrastructure.  Along the same lines, Rep. Dan Lungren testified that Iran is in the top five worldwide for cyber capabilities.  Rep. Lungren went on to say that Iranian intelligence operations against the U.S. have "dramatically increased" and that we can only hope the fear of an "overwhelming U.S. response . . . follow[ing] an Iranian cyber-attack" would deter them from using a cyberattack.

The Haaretz article also detailed how Iran might be willing to enlist proxies (i.e. Hezbollah) when using a cyberattack, how Iran has heavily invested in a cyber army, and how Iran viewed Stuxnet as an attack from the West justifying its massive cyber buildup.

You can find the Haaretz source article here.

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Haaretz also reported that Iran has identified the source of a recent cyberattack on their oil industry.  Iranian officials didn't mention who was behind the attack, but did say that the offending computer virus attempted to "steal and damage data."

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