June 28, 2019
The fact that President Trump canceled a planned retaliatory military attack on Iran for shooting down a US drone got huge attention worldwide, but very little attention was given the fact that he approved a retaliatory cyber attack at the same time.
The cyberattacks June 20 were aimed at disabling Iranian computer systems run by the Pasdaran that control its rocket and missile launches. Whether the attack worked or not cannot be known as Iran has not launched any missiles or rockets in several weeks.
The retaliatory cyberattack was first reported by Yahoo News. The Associated Press and The New York Times swiftly confirmed the Yahoo News stor.
While the cyberattack was portrayed as a response to the Iranian shootdown of a US drone, officials said Iranian hackers had upscaled their own cyber attacks on the United States in recent weeks. And the cyber retaliation was already being planned weeks before the drone was shot down.
Hackers in Iran assumed to be working for the government have targeted US government agencies plus sectors of the private economy including finance and petroleum, according to FireEye and CrowdStrike, two firms that track such activity.
They said the new campaign from Iran appeared to have been started shortly after the Trump Administration imposed sanctions in May on Iran’s petrochemical industry.
Iranian hackers have a history of such attacks, but they had dropped off after the nuclear agreement was signed in 2015.
In Tehran, Telecommunications Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi dismissed the news stories, saying the West has attempted “millions” of cyber-attacks on Iran’s military, but all had been foiled.
One recurring tactic to lure Americans into giving up useful information has been an email pretending to be from the White House Council of Economic Advisers and seeking applications for a job opening.