Iran is more likely to admit launching a cyberattack to devastate American business than other adversaries such as China and Russia, according to cybersecurity expert Mark Montgomery.
China and Russia are more formidable adversaries, but Iran is likelier to digitally hit America while taking credit for doing so, Mr. Montgomery, former Cyberspace Solarium Commission executive director, said Monday.
“Iran might be more willing than China or Russia to have an attack against the United States attributed to them,” Mr. Montgomery told C-SPAN. “And what they would do is use a proxy and then, again, claim it was a proxy that did it.”
Congress created the Cyberspace Solarium Commission in a 2018 defense bill, and Mr. Montgomery served as a staff leader for the commission looking to overhaul cyber policy. The group completed a report in 2020, and Mr. Montgomery has continued to advocate for implementing the commission’s remaining policy recommendations.
Mr. Montgomery, also a Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow, told C-SPAN that China and Russia’s cyber tools exceed Iranian cyberattackers’ capabilities but Iran has a willingness to act.
“The kind of cyberattack they would do, I think, would impact a business more than an industry; it would impact a small region rather than a large industrial sector,” he said of an Iranian cyberattack on America.
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Iran-sponsored digital breaches have already hammered America and taken aim at civilian targets. For example, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said last year that the Iranian government tried to cyberattack Boston Children’s Hospital in the summer of 2021.
“We got a report from one of our intelligence partners indicating Boston Children’s was about to be targeted, and understanding the urgency of the situation, the cyber squad in our Boston Field Office raced to notify the hospital,” Mr. Wray said in June 2022. “Our folks got the hospital’s team the information they needed to stop the danger right away.”
Boston Children’s Hospital was far from the only target in Iran’s crosshairs. The FBI and cyber officials from the U.K., Australia and the U.S. warned in November 2021 that Iranian government-sponsored cyberattackers were taking aim at victims in the health care and transportation sectors.
Last year, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said they suspected Iran breached a federal civilian agency’s network.
More recently, Iran’s hackers are focused on Israel. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said last week it observed an Iran-linked hacking group, Imperial Kitten, targeting Israel’s transportation, technology and logistics sectors amid Hamas’ attack on Israel last month.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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