Iran cyberattack fear has America on alert

Washington: The US is bracing for cyberattacks Iran could launch in retaliation for the re-imposition of san-ctions this week by 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 programme. The experts say the threat will intensify following Washington’s move on 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 firm. The Massachusetts-based company predicted back in May that the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement will 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 denies using its cyber capabilities for offensive purposes, and accuses the US of targeting Iran. Several years ago, the top-secret Stux-net computer virus destr-oyed centrifuges invol-ved in Iran’s contested nuclear programme. Stuxnet, which is widely believed to be an American and Israeli creation, caused thousands of centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility to spin themselves to destruction at the height of the West’s fears over Iran’s plan.

“The US has been the most aggressive country in offensive cyber activity and publicly boasted about attacking targets across the world,” said Alireza Miryousefi, spok-esman for Iran’s diplomatic mission at the UN, contending that Iran’s cyber capabilities are “exclusively for defensive purposes.”