US officials have told Reuters that in response to the attacks on a pair
of Saudi oil refineries in mid-September, the US carried out a cyber
attack against Iran, damaging physical hardware in the process.
Such an attack has been alleged before, and these officials are only
confirming on condition of anonymity, and even then are refusing to
provide any details on what was actually attacked.
The Pentagon said they don’t discuss any of their cyber attacks, and so
they are neither going to confirm or deny if they did it. Iran denied
that they were attacked, suggesting the officials “must have dreamt it.”
The US has long carried out cyber attacks against Iran, but the details
are never clear. Iran has an interest in not confirming when it happens,
and downplaying the impact they are having.
We don’t like to draw attention too much to the fact that the Houthis have become so good at these attacks. Let’s blame the Iranians.
Fine. But then why aren’t we retaliating? Because we’re weak?
Ok. Let’s say we did a cyber attack.
That’s about it. Concise and no doubt correct.
More long winded then, it is quite possible that Iran and Hezbollah have assisted in some way to the recent attack on the oil installations to maximize the impact but who says their help is even required. The Iran narrative has been pushed from the start of the war, and it is clear it was totally made up at the start and even now it’s not clear if
there is significant assistance from Iran.
It’s easy to believe the Houthis can’t do it by themselves and their missiles are made with heavy Iranian support, and to go even furtner (or much less far??) and deduce the missiles must be launched from Iran. Wait what, they mean Iran is not helping the Houthis with their technology and components then but doing their own attacking? As Isa Blumi points out somewhere, notice how the Houthis don’t have any missile defense at all while the damage done is large and Iran is good at air defense.
Iran’s contribution is heavily overrated. Houthi increasing knowhow over the years is underrated. This is not a proxy war for them.
So it should be ok for Iran to pick someone of their choosing, regardless of facts, to attack for their tanker get hit recently. Notice no outrage from the international community when a non military vessel gets blasted if it’s Iran’s vessel getting blasted.
The problem with conducting cyberattacks against US enemies is that the US has far more and easier targets to hit with a cyberattack than most other countries. It’s just going to cause more of an “cyber arms race” – and everyone is going to suffer. This is the considered opinion of most, if not all, infosec experts. My opinion, as usual, is that it’s worse than that.
“The problem with conducting cyberattacks against US enemies is that the US has far more and easier targets to hit with a cyberattack than most other countries.”
Good point.