A U.S. hack of Iran's database of oil tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf curtailed, at least temporarily, the rogue regime's ability to target tankers, senior officials told The New York Times.
The June 20 cyberattack took military communications systems offline, some of which have yet to be restarted, and Iran has not targeted tankers since, according to the report.
"You need to ensure your adversary understands one message: The United States has enormous capabilities which they can never hope to match, and it would be best for all concerned if they simply stopped their offending actions," former senior intelligence official Norman Roule told the Times.
The attack, which came after Iran shot down an unmanned American drone, was seen as a justification for the high costs of maintaining cyber operations – some of which are one-use attacks that can tip off the adversary to deploy a fix to the vulnerability that was exposed, the Times reported.
"It can take a long time to obtain access, and that access is burned when you go into the system and delete something," former legal counsel for Cyber Command, Gary Brown, told the Times. "But on the same token, you cannot just use that as an excuse not to act. You can't just stockpile access and never use it."
But the attack was deemed worth the cost, because it came in lieu of a military response, which might have touched off much more aggressive actions on the behalf of Iran, as opposed to curtailing them, according to officials to the Times.
"Iran is a sophisticated actor," said retired Major Gen. Mark Quantock, a former director of intelligence for the U.S. Central Command. "Russia, China, Iran, and even North Korea would all be able to see how they were penetrated."
Specific details of the cyberattack were not given, but a senior defense official told the Times air defense and missile systems were not targeted, despite false reports to the contrary.
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