WASHINGTON, DC- Just over a week after the U.S. obliterated Iran’s uranium enrichment facility that was ostensibly being used to develop nuclear bombs, the FBI and other federal agencies warned of possible Iranian cyberattacks coming in the wake of the U.S. airstrikes, according to The Epoch Times.
In a warning directed at critical infrastructure operators, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DDCCC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning about possible cyberattacks originating from the Iranian regime or its surrogates.
“Defense Industrial Base companies, particularly those possessing holdings or relationships with Israeli research and defense firms, are at increased risk,” the agencies stated in the advisory.
While the agencies said they have not seen anything to indicate any type of “coordinated campaign” to target U.S. infrastructure from Iran, they urged the companies “to learn more about the Iranian state-backed cyber threat and actionable mitigations to harden cyber defenses.”
Separately, the FBI stated that over the past few months, “Iranian-aligned hacktivists have increasingly conducted website defacements and leaks of sensitive information exfiltrated from victims.”
Among activities anticipated are an increase in distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against U.S. or Israeli websites in light of the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Iranian-affiliated cyber actors may also conduct ransomware attacks in collaboration with other cybercriminal groups,” the FBI warned.
“These actors have been observed working directly with ransomware affiliates to conduct encryption operations, as well as steal sensitive information from these networks and leaking it online.”
Israel and Iran have been engaged in a months-long skirmish, with Israel launching attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran responding in kind by firing missiles at Israel.
While Israel was targeting military and nuclear-related targets, Iran has primarily been targeting civilian areas in Israel.
While the United States initially didn’t get involved, President Trump had vowed that Iran could “never get a nuclear weapon.”
Since Israel didn’t have the weapons capability to strike Iran’s nuclear enrichment targets, many buried deep underground, the United States Air Force was deployed using B-2 bombers and so-called “bunker buster” bombs to take out Iran’s program.
After the strike, President Trump declared the targets “obliterated.”
While the targets were nearly completely destroyed, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said last weekend that Iran may attempt to reconstitute its program.
Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the three sites struck by the U.S., “in terms of treatment, conversion, and enrichment of uranium, have been destroyed to an important degree.”
He said, however, that portions are “still standing” and believes “if they [Iran] so wish, they will be able to start doing it again.”
He said that the only way to assess the full extent of the damage is for Iran to allow inspectors in, which is unlikely.
Regarding cyber threats, some experts have noted that the regime occasionally employs hacking operations and cyberattacks to enhance its standing, while exaggerating claims of scope and success.
‘It’s important that we don’t overhope the threat here and give them the win they’re after,” John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence, said in a social media post on X last month.
Hultquist added that he’s more concerned “about cyber espionage against our leaders, and surveillance aided by compromises in travel, hospitality, telecommunications, and other sectors where data could be used to identify and physically track persons of interest.”
Iran’s leadership has become increasingly unhinged, and last fall, Manhattan federal prosecutors alleged that the Iranian government had ordered an operative to assassinate President Trump.
Last July 13, a lone gunman came within centimeters of killing Trump during the campaign at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
He was struck in the ear due to a timely turn of his head to look at a video screen. Had he not turned, that attempt, experts say, would have been successful. There is no evidence that Iran was behind that attempt.
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