Iran threatens to strike American technology companies in the Middle East

Iran on Tuesday threatened to strike facilities in the Middle East owned by American technology companies as part of the escalating war that began with American and Israeli strikes at the end of February.

In a statement It was reported by the country’s Tasnim News AgencyIran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that as of Wednesday, more than a dozen technology companies would be considered “legitimate targets,” including Apple, Google, Intel and Tesla. The letter advised employees to leave their workplaces and those residing near those companies “in all countries” to leave the area within one kilometre.

Amazon’s cloud computing operations in Bahrain were damaged on Wednesday. According to a report by the Economic Times. Amazon AWS was it Subject of a previous drone attack in March.

Representatives of the companies on the list, including Apple, Google, IBM, Palantir, Boeing, Intel and Tesla, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Microsoft responded to the request and said the company doesn’t have anything to share about the threats at this time.

In a Statement to CNBCAn Intel spokesperson said: “The safety and well-being of our team is our number one priority. We are taking steps to protect and support our workers and facilities in the Middle East and are actively monitoring the situation.”

The US government said it would defend companies that were threatened. An unnamed White House official He told Reuters The United States is “ready and willing to limit any attacks by Iran.”

Another threat that could make things worse

The language of the IRGC’s message suggests that it wants to harm technology companies, not necessarily people. This could mean attacks geared toward disruption and data exposure rather than actually attacking technology offices or data locations.

Chris Niehues, founder and CEO of Facebook, said the threats were “more about sending a message than causing visible harm.” Ohio-based cybersecurity company Vigilant. “Based on what we’ve seen from Iranian groups recently, this likely means wiping devices, shutting down systems, and stealing data to embarrass the target,” he added.

Even more worrying is that in addition to the IRGC threats, there are a series of attacks by North Korean hackers targeting supply chains. and code repositories They can conform, causing more damage.

“What worries me most is the overlap,” Niehuis said. “There are North Korean hackers who are embedding themselves into the software supply chain. There are Iranian hackers who are threatening to destroy American companies.” “And they both exploit the same fundamental weakness: the way modern software is built on a chain of trust that no one can verify.”

Vigilant found that 40% of the most popular projects are open source They have weaknesses Which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and North Korean hackers can exploit. Nyhuis said companies need to be more vigilant about pulling tools and code from the Internet and checking software designs to close down vulnerabilities.