Operation Epic Fury did not start with bombs. It started with cyber.
According to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, General Dan Caine, before the first US bombs began to drop on Iran on February 28, the operators of the Command and the US Space Command had already launched what they did. to be called “non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond.”
Operation Epic Fury did not start with bombs. It started with cyber.
According to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, General Dan Caine, before the first US bombs began to drop on Iran on February 28, the operators of the Command and the US Space Command had already launched what they did. to be called “non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond.”
It is not the first time that this administration has used an offensive internet function: US President Donald Trump he suggested that they were used to cause blackouts in Venezuela in January before the US military arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Caine also acknowledged that Cyber Command and Air Force Command have created “disparate impacts” in support of the Venezuela operation, without disclosing what those impacts are.
It’s not even the first time the administration has used such power against Iran, like Caine exposed Last June that the US Cyber Command “supported” attacks on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities that month. That is reported included cyber weapons that disrupted Iran’s missile defense systems (the Pentagon declined to comment further on its cyber use).
The Trump administration was expected for a long time national internet strategyreleased on March 6, touted both operations. “Whether … supporting an international operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, or leaving our adversaries blind and clueless during a flawless military operation to bring international terrorist Nicolas Maduro to justice, adversaries recognize that American cyber operators and tools are the best in the world and can be deployed quickly and defend American strategy,” he said. set out the six-pronged doctrine that begins with the intention of “shaping the character of the enemy” using “the full range of defensive and offensive activities of the US government.”
US Network National Director Sean Cairncross, speaking at a conference in Washington on Monday, described the first pillar as the “single most important piece” of the strategy. “We need to reset the risk calculations across the ocean for actors who seek to harm us,” he said.
Offensive cyberbullying is nothing new in the United States. In fact, one of the most famous examples also involves Iran, where the United States and Israel are it is believed to have used a jointly developed cyberweapon called Stuxnet in the 2000s to target Iran’s nuclear facilities (both countries have denied doing so).
Publicly acknowledging such offensive cyber activity, let alone openly boasting about it, is “a new kind of progress,” according to Lauryn Williams, who served as director of strategy in the White House Office of the National Cyber Director and led its strategic plan on aerospace security in the Biden administration. “To align that kind of public messaging approach that senior officials have with what we’ve seen in the national cyber strategy is a thematic shift from the Trump administration’s focus on offensive cyber operations,” said Williams, now deputy director of the strategic technology program at the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Israel, one of the most sophisticated military cyber operators, has also been heavily involved in the current conflict. The Financial Times information that Israel’s hacking of Tehran’s traffic cameras and telephone towers played a major role in the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel is reported also hacked BadeSaba Calendar—a popular Iranian prayer app with over 5 million downloads—to display the message such as “It’s time to count” and “help has arrived” on the first day of the US-Israeli strike. (The Israeli government has not publicly claimed responsibility for the hack.)
Iranian state media also reported that several Iranian news websites were affected to show messages against Khamenei’s government that day, although these have also not been claimed by the US or Israeli government.
But the Israel Defense Forces did claim loans for a strike it said hit Iran’s “Cyber Warfare headquarters,” although the extent of damage to the facility and the impact of the strike on Iran’s cyber capabilities remain unclear.
Iran has long been classified as one of the biggest enemies of the United States and its allies on the Internet, with Iranian hackers successfully targeting everything from. Las Vegas casinos for Rural water systems of the United States for Trump 2024 election campaigns.
“Iran is a threat when it comes to cybersecurity,” said Scott White, director of the cybersecurity program at George Washington University and a former Canadian military and intelligence officer. “We put Iran in the group of China, Russia, North Korea as the four biggest state-sponsored threats.”
Since the war with Iran began on February 28, there have been some indications of groups linked to Iran targeting Israeli systems, and Israel’s National Cyber Directorate. warning about “dozens” of Iranian violations of Israeli security cameras and infiltration attempts and delete data from Israeli systems. So-called Iran-linked hacker groups such as Handala and Cyber Islamic Resistance have also targeted US, Israeli, and other regional infrastructure in the past week, according to cybersecurity firms. Flashpoint and Halcyonbut many of the groups’ claims about the effects of their attacks have yet to be confirmed.
Overall, the large-scale cyber retaliation expected from Iranian state actors has been “more muted,” particularly against critical US infrastructure, according to Alexander Leslie, a senior consultant at the cybersecurity and intelligence firm Recorded Future. “There is a lot of alleged activity and low-level disruption, and Iran’s advanced network has been proven to be minimal,” he said in an email. “We continue to see signs that groups linked to the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Ministry of Intelligence have been quieter and more defensive than many expected, while hacker noise is easier to generate and easier to amplify.”
While that may be due to war disruptions, limited internet connectivity inside Iran, and the assassination of senior leaders who would normally direct online operations, it is also understood that Iran is biding its time.
“While this (Trump) administration may live this time, the Iranians will live a year,” White said. “We may have an answer to this crisis a year from now — any time you’re dealing with a symmetrical war, it’s going to be in their time.”
Wednesday offered a small taste of what that might look like, when Michigan-based medical device company Stryker — which employs more than 56,000 people worldwide —he said had been affected by cyber attacks. Handala, a hacker group with ties to Iran, is reported claimed responsibility for attackalthough Stryker has not yet linked the attack to any specific group or actor.
Dismantling Iran’s cyber capabilities is more difficult than destroying its bombs and missiles, and Williams said that the more Iran’s conventional military capabilities are reduced, the more likely it is to expand into cyberspace. The ability of cyber to be deployed from anywhere means “it’s a tool that is accessible even to well-resourced actors, so I would worry over time about Iran using more cyber attacks as a tool in the conflict as its kinetic capabilities are destroyed,” he added.
But the increasing use of cyber and kinetic attacks by the United States has further blurred the line between the two and continues to change the concept of what modern warfare looks like. “This battle reinforces the idea that the Internet is embedded in modern conflict rather than close to it,” Leslie said.
