Iran Warns to Give Crushing Response to US Cyber Attacks

The United States will face a "teeth-breaking" response if it continues to carry out cyber attacks against Iran, an Iranian official said.

"If the Americans' futile cyber attacks do not stop, it will face a teeth-breaking response," the Iranian students news agency quoted an unnamed cyber security official as saying. He gave no further details.

Last month, Iran said it had detected plans by the United States, Israel and Britain to launch a massive cyber strike only days after the latest round of talks between senior Iranian and western negotiators in Moscow.

In the last few years the United States and Israel have created several malware - including the Stuxnet worm, which is reportedly the most malefic piece of malware ever created, and its kin, Duqu, as well as the Flame malware - and used them to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

But, Iran has successfully repelled all these cyber attacks as it has continued its nuclear progress all these years.

Experts said some Flame code was found in Stuxnet virus.

"In the information space, 'teeth' just grow back," T.K. Keanini, chief technology officer at nCircle, told TechNewsWorld. "Iran might be able to attack some of our physical teeth… ."

The US and Israeli attacks reportedly targeted the automation network and Siemens hardware used in the affected locations.

Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems are configured to control and monitor specific industrial processes, and are employed in Iran's nuclear plants.

The Stuxnet worm also targeted the Siemens SCADA systems at Iran's nuclear plants.

Siemens SCADA systems are also used in US critical infrastructure, and that could expose it to danger from the latest malware to strike at Iran.

"Indeed, they have our weapon in their hands now and can use it against us," Hord Tipton, executive director of (ISC)2 and former CIO of the US Department of the Interior, told TechNewsWorld. "We handed them a nice weapon."

The worms "can be turned around and used to attack our critical infrastructure, but hopefully it will be attacking systems that have already been patched," Tipton said.

"We assume that the government is bolstered against these types of attacks, but 90 percent of our critical infrastructure is still in the hands of [the private sector], so we can't be sure," he explained. "There is no real way of knowing how many systems out there have not already been patched."

Although the Obama administration has made cyber security one of its top priorities, the US is still not adequately protected.

Meanwhile, Congress is battling over a cyber security bill; Sen. Joe Lieberman and other sponsors say they're being forced to water it down and reintroduce it.

"We are still very vulnerable [to cyber attacks], though it's likely an attack would need a weapon that has been designed to go after our systems, much like this [Thunderstruck] attack appears to have been designed to attack Iran uniquely," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.

"Given the high probability of an attack that could shut down much of the US infrastructure, systems likely should be more aggressively segregated and then upgraded with monitoring software and platforms, so that attacks are both more difficult, and attempts and trends are better monitored," he suggested.

"This isn't a one-time event," said Enderle. "We are effectively at war in cyberspace."
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