Cyberweapons likely to be big part of any U.S. – Syria clash

Cyberweapons likely to be big part of any U.S. – Syria clash

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9457221_sA U.S. led military attack on Syria may have been averted, at least for a while, by the Russian proposal to negotiate the transfer of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks to international control, but had the United States gone ahead with a strike, there is little doubt that cyberattacks would have been used by both sides. If the United States decides to attack Syria in the future, we should expect cyberweapons to be used, as reported by HLS News Wire

The United States will use cyberattacks to blind Syria’s air defense systems and paralyze other targets.

Syria, even with its limited cyber warfare capabilities, will likely respond with cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure and prominent targets such as government Web sites.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that recently, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a hacktivist group supported by the Assad regime, has targeted Web sites of news outlets critical of Syria. Just last month the SEA managed to shut down the New York Times Web site down for a day.

Such attacks do not pose a threat to the United States, but Syria could enhance its own limited capabilities by appealing for support from anti-American hacktivists from around the world, thus increasing the damage to the disruption of the U.S. economy and American daily life.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

The Monitor notes that the U.S. government has quietly advised U.S. companies and operators of critical infrastructure facilities to prepare for a retaliatory cyberattack from Syria or its supporters.

The likelihood of an Iranian cyberattack on the United States in retaliation to an American attack on Syria however is not high. The new Iranian president appears to be seeking a restart of international talks about Iran’s nuclear program in an effort to have the economic sanctions on the country lifted.

Still, Iran’s cyber militia has been credited with launching cybersttacks against U.S. banks. The development of Iran’s cycler capabilities is attributed to more than $1 billion investment that the country has made since 2011 to defend itself against U.S. and Israeli cyberattacks targeting Iran’s nuclear program and industrial infrastructure.

Some experts support the use of cyberattacks, arguing that using cyberweapons may be a better alternative as the death toll is likely to be zero when cyberattacks are launched. “There’s this mystique about cyberweapons — but nobody’s ever died from a cyberattack,” says Jason Healey director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, an international diplomacy think tank in Washington. “Here the U.S. has the opportunity not only to show how cyberweapons can be utilized responsibly under the laws of war … [but also to] display how such weapons are more humanitarian than bombs that kill people.”

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