An expert has voiced their concerns about America's chances of facing another cyberattack by Iranian-aligned hackers.
The attack is said to have been a 'direct response' to Donald Trump's call to issue an air strike on three Iranian nuclear sites on June 21.
President Trump quickly urged Iran not to retaliate and stated that they would be 'met with force far greater' than the weekend's strikes if they did.
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It was thought to have taken Iran 48 hours to retaliate to the air strike, which it did on the US' Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Speaking at the NATO summit this week, Trump alleged that the 'nice' Iranians forewarned the US about the attack.
"They were very nice. They gave us warning," said Trump. "They said, 'We’re going to shoot them. Is 1 o’clock okay?' I said, 'It’s fine.'"
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Trump added: "Everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn't get hurt, expect for the gunners. Out of 14 high-end missiles that were shot at the base in Qatar, all 14 (as you know) were shot down by our equipment. Amazing stuff."
But it turns out that this wasn't Iran's first retaliation against America following Saturday's strikes.
How did they initially respond? With a cyberattack.
What happened?
According to reports, Truth Social experienced a cyberattack within hours of America bombing the Iranian nuclear sites. Apparently, users of the Trump-created social media platform were experiencing issues on Saturday night in what appeared to have been a brief outage shortly after Trump posted about the military's 'very successful' attack on Iran.
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It's said that users saw error messages while accessing the platform that read: "Network failed... please try again."
Who was behind the attack?
Hackers that go by 313 Team have claimed responsibility for the attack, a group which has known connections to Iran.
Per the Times of India, 313 Team is 'part of a wider network of pro-Russian and pro-Palestinian hacktivists known for targeting public infrastructure, government websites, and tech firms in Israel and elsewhere'.
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The Center for Internet Security (CIS) then confirmed on Monday that it was 313 Team that had taken credit for the hacking.
A spokesperson said: "We observed a sustained [Distributed Denial of Service] campaign originating from infrastructure previously attributed to Iranian state-aligned actors."
What has an expert now warned?
Arnie Bellini, co-founder and former CEO of ConnectWise, said of Saturday's incident: "The recent wave of attacks are known as denial of service attacks. And they've been hosting those on banks, defense contractors, energy firms, and hilariously, Truth Social. So you know it's a direct shot at President Trump's attack on their nuclear facilities, and it happened as soon as the nuclear plants were hit, so it was a direct response."
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Speaking to the Mirror, Bellini went on to warn: "Hackers are going to try to erode public trust in their ability to use computer systems. [...] Think of it as cyber cyberterrorism. If you were to plot a terrorist attack on the United States of America, it's going to be the same strategy."
He also shared his thoughts on the likelihood of more severe attacks being carried out on US companies — something he said is 'probably going to happen'.
"Assuming this was sort of an opening salvo, the next likely phase would be a coordinated and escalated blended threat," Bellini added.
Topics: Iran, Donald Trump, Truth Social, Technology, News, US News, Social Media
Niamh Shackleton