Iran cyber abilities expanding: US General

A senior US Air Force official says Iran has beefed up its cyber capabilities in reaction to a 2010 cyber attack with the Stuxnet computer virus on its nuclear facility, stressing it will be a “force to be reckoned with” in the future.

“The Iranian situation is difficult to talk about. It’s clear that the Natanz [nuclear facility] situation generated reaction by them. They are going to be a force to be reckoned with, with the potential capabilities that they will develop over the years and the potential threat that will represent to the United States,” General William Shelton, who heads Air Force Space Command said on Thursday.

The general, however, refused to comment on Iran’s ability to disrupt US government computer networks.

On January 10, Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed allegations that the Iranian government has been behind cyber attacks on the US banking system.

In a statement, the mission said that the Islamic Republic condemns any use of malware that targets important service-providing institutes by violating the national sovereignty of states.

The US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) had claimed that Iran orchestrated cyber attacks on US financial institutions.

Iran has been the target of several cyber attacks over the past few years.

In June, 2012, the New York Times reported that US President Barack Obama had secretly ordered a cyber attack with the Stuxnet computer virus against Iran to sabotage the country’s nuclear energy program.

A report published by the Washington Post in June, 2012 said that the United States and the Israeli regime had jointly created the computer virus Flame — a Stuxnet-like espionage malware — to spy on Iran.

Stuxnet, first indentified by the Iranian officials in June 2010, is a malware designed to infect computers using a control system favored by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs, and power plants.

In July 2010, media reports claimed that Stuxnet had targeted industrial computers around the globe, with Iran being the main target of the attack. They said the country’s Bushehr nuclear power plant was at the center of the cyber attack.

However, Iranian experts detected the virus in time, averting any damage to the country’s industrial sites and resources.

In response to such attacks, Iran launched a cyber defense headquarters tasked with preventing computer worms from breaking into or stealing data from the country’s maximum security networks, including nuclear facilities, power plants, data centers, and banks.