The Iranian cyber-attack in
early April on an Israeli water-treatment facility, designed to get computers
to add too much chlorine to the Israeli water supply, represents a new phase in
Iranian aggression, a former Israeli defense official has said.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, former national security adviser
to Israeli Prime Minister told JNS on Sunday that there is no historical
experience for cyber wars and their consequences, and that therefore, much caution
is needed when assessing them.
According to international media reports, Israel retaliated by
paralyzing Iran’s key seaport—the
Shahid Rajaee port in the city of Bandar Abbas, which is a strategic hub for
Iranian sea imports, exports and trafficking of illicit weapons.
“It is not possible to know whether Israel’s reported response will
deter Iran, which to a certain extent has opened a “Pandora’s box’ in a
cyber-attack designed to harm civilians,” said Amidror.
In its attack, Iran also “placed itself at great risk,” he added.
Amidror, who is also first distinguished fellow at the Jewish
Institute for the National Security of America (JINSA), said that cyber
maneuvers have the potential to deteriorate into war, if the side that is
attacked “feels that it has been greatly harmed, and it cannot suitably
retaliate against its enemy, and therefore remains vulnerable to attacks from
it.”
However, as in any difficult decision, he added, “decision-makers
must also take into account whether responding to a cyber-attack with a kinetic
[physical] strike will succeed, and what price might be paid if the adversary
also decides to respond kinetically.”
A ‘cyber winter is coming’
April’s cyber strike on Israel’s water systems was a “synchronized
and organized attack” designed to harm civilian infrastructure, Yigal Unna, who
heads Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, said recently.
In comments relayed by the Associated Press,
Unna said that recent developments have marked the start new era of covert
cyber war, warning that a “cyber winter is coming.”
“Rapid is not something that describes enough how fast and how
crazy and hectic things are moving forward in cyberspace, and I think we will
remember this last month and May 2020 as a changing point in the history of
modern cyber warfare,” Unna told a digital international cyber conference. “If
the bad guys had succeeded in their plot we would now be facing, in the middle
of the corona[virus] crisis, very big damage to the civilian population and a
lack of water and even worse than that,” he added.
A Western intelligence official told the Financial Times that had the Iranian attack
succeeded, it would have “triggered fail-safes that would have shut down the
pumping station when the excess chemical was detected, but would have left tens
of thousands of Israeli civilians and farms parched in the middle of a
heatwave.”
Professor Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle
Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, told Israel’s 101 FM radio
station in recent days that the reported cyber-attack on Bander Abbas port sent
a powerful message to Iran’s regime about Israel’s cyber capabilities.
Bander Abbas “is not far from Hormuz Straits, which is outlet for
shipping from the Persian Gulf to world,” noted Rabi. He described the port as
a “central life artery” for Iran for exports, imports, sea trade and military
activity.
The Washington Post reported that Israel was accused of a cyber attack that
crashed the port’s computer systems and caused “total disarray,” including
kilometers-long truck lines and long lines of sea vessels outside of the port.
Satellite imagery was shown in the report of the chaos.
“There is no doubt if you turn off the switch with a hidden hand,
that calls out for attention,” said Rabi, in reference to the reported attack
on the port. “If it’s true that Iran tried to intrude with a polluted hand into
Israel’s water infrastructure and harm the civilian world, then at a
public-awareness level, a line has been crossed. Israel could not let this
pass.”
The reported Israeli retaliation will give the Islamic Republic
reason to think twice before launching a new cyber-attack on Israeli civilian
targets, assessed Rabi.
Israel’s reported
response hit an Iranian nerve center, and demonstrated to Tehran “how big the
asymmetry is, including in the cyber field,” argued Rabi, although, he added,
Iran is making progress in its cyber-attack abilities. “This is how the
Iranian regime needs to be treated … Israel must speak in a Middle Eastern
language. The message to Iran is: Find a different tree to climb. If you climb
the Israeli tree, the price will be very high.”
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