Last month, Iran made the first shot by claiming it was attacking water facilities, adding tanks, bombs and pipes in Israel, sounding the alarm among national security and cybersecurity experts about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.
Although there was minor damage to the valves and water systems, according to Haaretz, in the end there was no persistent damage to the water source as the pirates had probably predicted.
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And then, on May 9, the Bandar Abbas port terminal in southern Iran suddenly stalled and maritime traffic was suspended for days. Israel was the reaction he controlled to inflict serious harm without causing casualties, the Washington Post reported this week.
Officials of the Israel Water Authority detected the attempt and without delay replaced the system’s passwords and took steps to protect their systems.
“It is rare to see a state actor targeting critical infrastructure in some other state. This type of activity is regularly reserved for conditions of war or quasi-war, at least in countries at most,” Kennedy said. “Iran doesn’t respect those rules.”
In addition, analysts also noted that Iran’s cyberattack was conducted through servers founded in the United States and Europe, indicating a degree of sophistication, a TACTIC regime used internationally through the conflicting parties of the West.
“The Israeli reaction has been measured enough to cause logistical and economic disruptions in Iran’s main port at a time when additional monetary disruptions can hardly occur due to sanctions, low oil prices, unemployment and high inflation,” said Jeff Bardin, chief security company intelligence officer Treadstone 71. “I suppose here that the Iranians used excerpts and updates to the Stuxnet code to manipulate the Israeli team.”
The Stuxnet virus was a joint cybernetic operation between Israeli and U.S. intelligence facilities and was implemented in 2011 to infect Iran’s growing nuclear program: very harmful power boxes connected to centrifuges used for uranium enrichment. However, Tehran has managed to correct the course after the course’s contagion, learning his own cyber defense and expanding his own tactics.
And after April’s attempt to damage Israel’s water systems, the regime exaggerated the outcome in its press as an opposite distraction to the coronavirus pandemic that cries out much of the country’s fitness system. Jubilation led Israel to recognize that an incident had occurred, which was widely rejected.
“We are in a state of constant cyber warfare accentuated by normal skirmishes, such as the Iranian attack on Israeli water systems and the Israeli reaction to Iran’s main port. Israel does not emerge from the shadows to provoke publicly known cyberattacks,” Bardin continued. “They did so this time, because Iran was blowing its chests in the face of the attack on the Israeli water system, which is considered a must-have infrastructure. Israel had to retaliate and did so to close the port.” for 10 days.
And Kennedy Extra noted that because Iran does not have the strength of the military to directly confront Israel or the United States, it is bound to have interaction in an asymmetric warfare, of which cyberspace is a vital part.
“Since Iran was attacked through Stuxnet, they have been actively developing their own cyber capabilities. This capskill is incredibly vital to Iran because it gives it the ability to attack within the borders of countries with which they simply cannot attack directly. classical military forces. It also allows them to get public relations victories at home, without risking a humiliating military response,” he said. “Iran’s cyber operations opposing Israel are increasingly adapting to the competitiveness of the pandemic. Every time you target critical infrastructure, the scenario is seriously worsened.”
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And things rose a little further on Thursday, after Hackers based in Iran infiltrated tens of thousands of unsafe Israeli websites, defusing their purposes and spreading threatening videos and messages about “crimes against the Palestinians” and “all we can do is revenge for a cyberattack.” . “
The organization remains on Facebook and Youtube.
“Thousands of Israeli sites, which add sites of giant and giant economic companies, have been vandalized after an attack by anti-Israel officials on the Upress company,” Bardin said. “The attack interrupted the company’s servers. Instead of the same old content from the sites, it looks like content calling for the destruction of Israel. In addition, sites ask users for permission to use the camera to take pictures.”
He noted that at this stage, it is not known whether corporate databases were hacked or it is just corruption. Upress, one of Israel’s largest Internet hosting companies, announced on its Facebook page that the attack was due to security flaws in the WordPress plugin. “We work in collaboration with the state’s cyber authority, conduct security research, and manage all sites,” the company added. Hacking an Internet hosting company allows hackers to access many sites at once.
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In addition, Bardin’s Treadstone 71 discovered discussions on Iranian social networking sites about WordPress vulnerabilities before penetration.
But it remains to be seen where the cyber-escalate between Iran and Israel is headed, and whether tensions will continue. According to Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior researcher and Iran expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the use of cyber equipment to hurt and spy is consistent with Iran’s asymmetric military strategy.
“Like wars for powers, cyber domination allows Iran to hide its hand and participation, as well as restrict the possibility of kinetic recoil and escalation,” he said. “In this sense, Iran’s cyber wars have been successful, even if they invite Israel or other states to respond to Iranian aggression in the same way or with greater means.”
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Some experts also said that Iran’s resumption of silent fighting with Israel last month was a reaction to Israel’s common attack on Iran-backed Hezbollah’s assets in Syria.
” (Cyber conflict) might not end soon. Iran’s cyberattack on Israel’s water infrastructure was a practical and low-risk way to retaliate against the recent (alleged) Israeli movements opposed to Iranian targets in Syria,” said Held Heatherman, Luminae Group’s spouse manager and former Middle East Member at the U.S. State Department. “Regardless of the fact that Iran’s cyberattack did not cause significant damage or internal disruption from Israel, it gave the Iranian regime the opportunity to mark problems with its national audience and divert attention from the turmoil in the country, which has intensified as a result of coronavirus and low oil prices.”