From: The Center for National Security at Fordham Law
The government has warned federal agencies and private industry that a U.S. strike on Syria could precipitate retaliatory cyberattacks by Syrian operatives. The alert, which analysts say is unusual for Washington to issue before military operations, comes just days after a group called the Syrian Electronic Army brought down the New York Times website and disrupted the sites of other Western media companies. The Syrian group previously hacked into the AP’s Twitter account and falsely reported an explosion near the White House in April, which prompted a brief, $136 billion dip in the S&P 500.
However, U.S. authorities note that the threat from Syrian hackers is limited, where cyber operations would likely entail continued nuisance attacks on Western media firms and other high-profile websites. But experts say that hackers in Iran, a staunch ally of the Assad regime, pose a much greater cyber threat. Iranian operatives have reportedly been probing for vulnerabilities in U.S. critical infrastructure in recent months. “The only thing now that stands between us and a big [cyber] attack is the goodwill of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” said cybersecurity expert James Lewis in a Bloomberg interview.
Leave a Reply