Obama hits pause on U.S. action in face of crippling cyber strikes from Syria, Iran

Syria and its ally Iran have been building cyberattack capabilities for years and soon might have a chance to use their skills in a hot war for the first time.

Former U.S. officials and cybersecurity scholars say Syria has a demonstrated cyberattack capability and could retaliate against anticipated Western military strikes against Syria for its suspected chemical weapons attack against civilians in the country’s 2-year-old civil war.


“It’s foreseeable that [Syrian] state-sponsored or state-sympathetic hackers could seek to retaliate” against U.S., Israeli or Western interests, Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of Homeland Security, told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

“We have already seen regional cyberactors, such as the Syrian Electronic Army, conduct attacks on U.S. targets,” added Rep. James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Syrian Electronic Army has successfully attacked computer networks used by U.S. media outlets — hacking the Twitter account of The Associated Press this year and mostly knocking The New York Times website offline for 20 hours Tuesday and Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/28/syria-iran-capable-of-launching-a-cyberwar/#ixzz2dN9HVX5g
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