[NYTimes] A secret cyberattack against Iran in June wiped out a critical database used by Iran’s paramilitary arm to plot attacks against oil tankers and degraded Tehran’s ability to covertly target shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, at least temporarily, according to senior American officials.
Iran is still trying to recover information destroyed in the June 20 attack and restart some of the computer systems ‐ including military communications networks ‐ taken offline, the officials said.
Nightly offsite backups weren't a part of their IT recovery plan, apparently
Senior officials discussed the results of the strike in part to quell doubts within the Trump administration about whether the benefits of the operation outweighed the cost ‐ lost intelligence and lost access to a critical network used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s paramilitary forces.
The United States and Iran have long been involved in an undeclared cyberconflict, one carefully calibrated to remain in the gray zone between war and peace. The June 20 strike was a critical attack in that ongoing battle, officials said, and it went forward even after President Trump called off a retaliatory airstrike that day after Iran shot down an American drone.
Iran has not escalated its attacks in response, continuing its cyberoperations against the United States government and American corporations at a steady rate, according to American government officials.
American cyberoperations are designed to change Iran’s behavior without initiating a broader conflict or prompting retaliation, said Norman Roule, a former senior intelligence official. Because they are rarely acknowledged publicly, cyberstrikes are much like covert operations, he said.
"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," Mr. Roule said.
Fuck with us and you will be using smoke signals to communicate. Capiche?