US Schemed Cyberattack on Iran: Report
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The US had developed an “elaborate plan” for a major cyberattack on Iran in the event the nuclear talks between Tehran and six world powers failed to yield the desired results, a report said.
According to a report carried by the New York Times on Tuesday, coming documentary film and interviews with military and intelligence officials involved in the nuclear talks said 'Nitro Zeus' was part of an effort to target Iran’s air defenses, transportation, command control centers and power grids in case the negotiations failed.
“…the planning for Nitro Zeus involved thousands of American military and intelligence personnel, spending tens of millions of dollars and placing electronic implants in Iranian computer networks to ‘prepare the battlefield,’ in the parlance of the Pentagon,” the report said.
The US Cyber Command had been tasked with executing Nitro Zeus, it further said, adding, “The National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit was (also) responsible for penetrating adversary networks, which would have required piercing and maintaining a presence in a vast number of Iranian networks, including the country’s air defenses and its transportation and command control centers.”
The report also said that while the Pentagon was getting ready to implement the Nitro Zeus plan, the US intelligence agencies were busy with developing a separate cyberplan to disrupt Iran’s Fordo nuclear site.
“The attack would have been a covert operation, which the president can authorize even in the absence of a continuing conflict,” it said of the second cyberplan.
Back in June 2010, the US and Israel jointly carried out the worst cyberattack against Iran. In the attack, Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz was the target of the Stuxnet virus in what has become the most serious case of state cyber-terrorism because of its complexity and sabotage of sensitive properties.