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Malicious Iranian cyber activity is likely to ramp up, targeting organisations and persons of interest alike.
The United States’ will-they-or-won’t-they policy towards military intervention in Iran crystallised over the weekend when the Trump administration gave the green light to target Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
B2 stealth bombers launched from the US mainland dropped bunker-buster ordnance on three of Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities, drawing praise and condemnation in almost equal measure.
Iran has now said the US “must receive a response” in the wake of the attacks, but what that response might be remains to be seen. While a military response, targeting US assets in the region, is possible, another, more likely scenario could be a stepping up of Iranian cyber activity.
“In light of recent developments, the likelihood of disruptive cyber attacks against US targets by Iranian actors has increased. In recent years, Iran has primarily focused this activity on Israel, especially following October 7th. Those incidents offer useful insight into the capability and limitations of Iranian actors,” John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said in a recent statement to Cyber Daily.
However, while an increase in cyber attacks is likely, their impact may be hard to judge in advance.
“Iran has had mixed results with disruptive cyber attacks, and they frequently fabricate and exaggerate their effects in an effort to boost their psychological impact,” Hultquist said.
“We should be careful not to overestimate these incidents and inadvertently assist the actors. The impacts may still be very serious for individual enterprises, which can prepare by taking many of the same steps they would to prevent ransomware.”
Hacktivist groups are already likely beginning to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaigns in the wake of the US attacks, but Iran’s state-sponsored activity is more focused on espionage.
“Iran already targets the US with cyber espionage, which they use to directly and indirectly gather geopolitical insight and surveil persons of interest. Persons and individuals associated with Iran policy are frequently targeted through organisational and personal accounts and should be on the lookout for social engineering schemes,” Hultquist said.
“Individuals are also targeted indirectly by Iranian cyber espionage against telecoms, airlines, hospitality, and other organisations who have data that can be used to identify and track persons of interest.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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