Security Companies Accused of Exaggerating Iran's Cyberthreats Against the US

An anonymous reader writes: A widely-read report accusing Iran of hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks against the U.S. is being criticized as hugely inaccurate as well as motivated by marketing and politics, according to a new whitepaper and critics around the security industry. The original report, solicited by a conservative think tank and published by Norse in the lead up to the RSA Security Conference, hit the front page of the New York Times by calling handshakes and network scans "sophisticated cyberattacks."

Comments

a rather predictable move.

[nimbius]

If you think Irans "cyber" threat is exaggerated, try their actual threat. After failing to overthrow the regional government, the US has maintained a 50 year sore-spot for the rising middle eastern power that borders on the definition of angry playground bully. We gin up our animosity for the country with occasional mistranslations from the shah, fervent warmongering from Iran, and our own latent islamophobia. the reason you havent heard much saber rattling from the US lately is because after two government shutdowns, a massive recession, and two failed wars we're basically relegated to observer status in foreign politics. Sure, we'll hustle a drone across some parched desert country like yemen occasionally but the recent treaties brokered between Iran and the US betray the fact that we either participate willingly in some form of diplomatic process on their terms, or they ignore us from any process in the future with impunity.

For vendors to bark up the cyber tree though? It might have worked 10 years ago for sure but now its a riskier gamble. Most people have forgotten the islamic republic single handedly and quite easily captured our most sophisticated drone. Perhaps the future threat is credible, that Iran would seek revenge for our Stuxnet attack on their nuclear research SCADA controllers, but thats predicated on the faulty logic that Iran would operate on a petty tit-for-tat foreign policy akin to the one the US has subscribed to for 40 years. Instead of feeding the trolls, Iran appears to just be focusing on nuclear power and something far more dangerous to the US than a nuclear bomb: Economic and energy independence. Building your own reactor fuel means you can power your cities outside your oil revenue and without having to purchase fuel from other countries. Everything from desalination to medical and industrial power now comes without the added caveat "with $foreign_nation assistance" and that means the US finds itself in the back seat the next time the middle east needs a desalination plant or X-Ray isotope. And it works as well as an ICBM as a deterrent, knowing the peaceful enrichment can rapidly turn into nuclear weapons if, say, another nation comes to overthrow your government again.