After the Israeli and American forces reached the Iranian nuclear objectives, the officials of both countries sounded the alarm by potentially disruptive cyber attacks carried out by the computer pirates of the Islamic Republic.
But as a fragile fire is maintained, cyber defenders in the United States and Israel say that until now they have seen little out of the ordinary, a potential sign that the threat of cyber abilities of Iran, as their battered military has been oversized.
There have been no indications of the disruptive cyber attacks often invoked during the discussions about Iran’s digital capacities, such as their alleged sabotage of tens of thousands of computers in the large Saudi Aramco oil company in 2012, or subsequent robberies in casinos or US water facilities.
“The volume of attacks seems to be relatively low,” said Nicole Fishbein, security researcher at the Intezer Israeli company. “The techniques used are not particularly sophisticated.”
Online guards groups claim that security analysts acted in the direction of Iran who boasted to hack a series of Israeli and Western companies following air attacks.
A group that calls himself Hack Hack claimed a series of attrusions and data intrusions, but Reuters could not corroborate his most recent piracy claims. The researchers say that the group, which arose following the Palestinian militant group of Hamas’ on October 7, 2023, Attack against Israel, probably operates from the Iran Ministry of Intelligence.
Rafe Pilling, an intelligence researcher of lead threats in the British cyber security company Sofos, said the impact of piracy activity seemed to be modest.
“As far as we can say, it is the usual mixture of ineffective chaos of genuine hacktivist groups and the directed attacks of people linked to Iran who probably have some success but also exaggerate their impact,” he said.
Iran’s mission before the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comments. Iran generally denies the realization of piracy campaigns.
The Israeli firm Check Point Software said that a piracy campaign that links Iran’s revolutionary guards in recent days has sent Phishing messages to Israeli journalists, academic officials and others.
In one case, computer pirates tried to attract a physical meeting in Tel Aviv, according to Sergey Shyvich, manager of the Threat Intelligence Group of Check Point. He added that the reasoning behind the proposed meeting was not clear.
Shykevich said there have been some attempts to destruction of data in Israeli objectives, which refused to identify, as well as a dramatic increase in attempts to exploit vulnerability in the security cameras made by Chinese, it will probably evaluate the damage of the pumps in Israel.
Pro-Iranian cyber operations demonstrate asymmetry with pro-Israeli cyber operations linked to the air war that began on June 13.
In the days elapsed since the beginning of the conflict, the alleged Israeli computer pirates have claimed to have destroyed data in one of Iran’s main state banks. They also burned approximately $ 90 million in cryptocurrencies that computer pirates claim that they were linked to government security services.
The National Cyber ​​Directorate of Israel did not return a message in search of comments.
Analysts said the situation is fluid and that the most sophisticated cyber activity can be flying under the radar.
Both Israeli officials and the United States have urged the industry to be attentive. A newsletter of the National Security Department of June 22 warned that the current conflict was causing a high threat atmosphere in the United States and that cyber actors affiliated with the Iranian government can make attacks against US networks. UU.
The FBI declined to comment on any possible Iranian cyber activities in the United States.
Yelisey Bohuslavskiy, the co -founder of the Intelligence Company Red Sense, compared the cyber operations of Iran with its missile program. Iranian weapons that rained over Israel during the conflict killed 28 people and destroyed thousands of homes, but most were intercepted and none significantly damaged the Israeli army.
Bohuslavskiy said Iranian piracy operations seemed to work similarly.
“There is a lot of hot air, there is a lot of indiscriminate civil orientation and, realistically, there are not so many results,” he said.
