U.S. supports Israel in cyber warfare against Iran

Intelligence officials in Israel and the U.S. are concerned about Iran's rapid progress in developing cyber weapons, especially Iran's ability to disrupt existing infrastructure in foreign countries. This was reported today (Sunday) by The New York Times.

A former senior commander of the U.S. Army said recently, according to the newspaper: "(The Iranians) startled them all with the speed they increased their capabilities."

Still, one of the points of contention among experts is whether Iran and North Korea are cooperating in developing cyber weapon systems, as they worked together in the past, for years, with the development of rocket technology.

A senior IDF officer told the Times that Israel has evidence that Tehran and Pyongyang began to collaborate in developing cyber weapons. He refrained from providing detailed information, but American authority officials say there is no evidence of such cooperation. However, the newspaper said Washington has feared that cooperation between Iran and North Korea will spread into the realm of cyber warfare.

Accelerating Iran's efforts at cyber warfare is largely attributed to progress in the work of Iranian computer scientists and their cooperation with local hacker groups. Iran's cyber warfare program has matured and become more disciplined compared to past efforts that focused on social networking efforts to lure American military personnel based in the Middle East and Persian Gulf into dating and travel services sites, or chat rooms. The intention was to obtain information that will obtain from those tempted information to enable breaking into military computer systems.

U.S. officials also said that Iran now hires foreign programmers of international organizations related to online crime, and some come from Russia.

However, Iran and North Korea are in a much lower in terms of their ability of cyber warfare than the U.S., Israel, Britain, Russia and China.

Against this background, the Obama administration has started to help U.S. allies in the Middle East to establish defense systems against Iran's cyber weapons, according to senior administration officials. Meanwhile U.S. will help its allies in Asia to defend themselves against possible cyber attacks from North Korea.

These officials did not inform which countries in the Persian Gulf have asked for assistance from the United States to defend against Iran's cyber attacks, but other authority officials said the list includes countries which played an active role in monitoring arms shipments from Iran, shooting them down at ports and providing intelligence to the U.S. on Iran actions . The most active countries in these areas are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Asian countries which will receive assistance are South Korea and Japan. The order of U.S. President Barack Obama, revealed on Friday in the Washington Post" and The Guardian, highlights the administration's efforts to prepare, and make other countries prepare, for cyber attacks that could paralyze critical infrastructure.

These government efforts stem from a cyber attack against AMERCO Saudi Arabia, the largest oil producer in Saudi Arabia, performed last year by Iran, according to U.S. officials. The attack caused a paralysis of 30 thousand computers of AMERCO but failed to slow the rate of oil production. Another attack which put the U.S. on alert was a cyber attack on the banking and media companies in South Korea, attributed to North Korea.

"The cyber attack on the Saudis was a warning to the entire region," said a senior official in the Obama administration. "It made everyone realize that while the Iranians think twice before launching a missile to attack an aim in the area, they see cyber attacks as a way in response to the sanctions against them."

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