Washington (AFP)

Cyberattacks rather than missiles: the specter of an open war between Iran and the United States seems to be dissipating but analysts agree that Tehran has not given up avenging the death of General Soleimani and Fourbit a response on the digital front.

The chronic tension between Iran and the United States rose sharply on January 3 with the Washington elimination in Iraq of a powerful Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, followed by reprisals against American military targets in Iraq.

Each camp has since made declarations in the direction of appeasement.

"I think we would be wrong to believe that everything is over," said Jon Bateman, a former Pentagon intelligence official, a cyberspace specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, however.

Computer offensives are "the easiest way for Iran to produce a direct effect on American territory," he points out.

Iran, he notes, has reduced its cyber activity against the United States in recent years, but the country still has "many tools" that could be used against America or its allies.

There is a wide range: cyber attacks on water or electricity distribution infrastructures, use of malware to destroy or delete data from a company or government entity, disinformation on social networks to destabilize the campaign electoral system, lists Mr. Bateman.

Analysts say cyber attacks can allow Iran to act against Washington without directly challenging its military.

For James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Iranians seem to have chosen to take their time to prepare a computer intrusion. "They might want to do something spectacular and symbolic," he thinks.

- "Most pronounced" threat today -

According to John Dickson, a former American Air Force officer, now employed by the security consultancy firm Denim Group, the world of IT security would be wrong to let their guard down on the grounds that two weeks have passed. have passed since the death of General Soleimani.

"I think the threat is more pronounced now," he said, noting that the Iranians "have had time to prepare, to get their plans out of the closet, it's more in line with their way of operating."

The use of ransomware (ransomware), a form of extortion, is for him a likely option since "they have been strangled economically by the sanctions".

The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning last week: "Iranian cyber threat actors have continuously improved their cyber offensive capabilities".

They continue, notes the government service, to get involved "in" conventional "+ activities, ranging from the degradation of websites to denial of service attacks (DDoS), including the theft of personal data, but have also shown a desire to push the limits of their activities ", with potentially attacks causing material damage.

The response could also be played on social networks.

Facebook and Twitter had already tried to curb, in 2018, what they presented as public opinion manipulation campaigns initiated from Iran.

These operations were thought of as "an extension of Iran's foreign policy", digital experts at the Atlantic Council think tank said in a report.

Researchers note that the hashtag #HardRevenge (hard revenge) started to proliferate in early January. "This could foreshadow a series of more intense information operations from Iran," the report said.

Cyber ​​operations are now fully part of the military arsenal and Iran realizes that the United States will not hesitate to use them against it either, underlines Jon Bateman.

They must not have forgotten, he notes, the episode of Stuxnet, a suspected virus of American-Israeli design introduced in 2010 into a computer in the Iranian nuclear complex, causing major malfunctions in the fleet of centrifuges used to uranium enrichment.

The United States would not necessarily respond to an Iranian cyber attack with another cyber attack, the analyst said. "They could resort to sanctions, criminal prosecution or military actions," he said.

Jon Bateman considers that Iran seemed determined in spite of everything to wash the affront of the death of Soleimani, the initiative "the most provocative of the United States for a long time".

© 2020 AFP