Cybersecurity experts are reportedly concerned President Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement will prompt cyberattacks from Iran.
In the hours after Trump announced the U.S. would be withdrawing from the agreement, researchers from security firm CrowdStrike detected a “notable” deviation in Iranian cyberactivity, the New York Times reports.
“With the nuclear deal ripped up, our nation and our allies should be prepared for what we’ve seen in the past,” former National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the news outlet.
Additionally, the NSA’s former general counsel Matt Olsen claimed that Iran has “upped its game faster than analysts anticipated.”
“[Iran] is now among our most sophisticated nation-state adversaries,” Olsen said. “We can anticipate those capabilities could well be turned against the U.S.”
“Given the history of Iranian cyberactivity in response to geopolitical issues, the American energy sector has every reason to expect some type of response from Iran,” Olsen added.
The Times spoke with more than a dozen sources, who said that pulling out of the Iran deal would lead to more cyberattacks from Iran.
“We’re probably one of the most automated technology countries in the world,” Alexander said. “We are an innovation nation and our technology is at the forefront of that innovation. We could have a very good offense, but so do they. And unfortunately, we have more to lose.”
A federal indictment in 2016 said Iranian hackers broke into computers that operated the Bowman Avenue Dam in New York in 2013. However, they could not interfere in the dam’s operations since it was offline and being fixed.
Trump announced Tuesday afternoon that the U.S. would pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and the “highest level of economic sanction” would be imposed, adding that nations who assist Iran obtain nuclear weapons could also face sanctions from the U.S.
The Obama-era agreement sought to put Iran’s nuclear program on ice in exchange for international sanctions relief.
