Syria and its ally Iran have been building cyber attack capabilities for years and might even use them in a hot war for the first time, cyber security experts have warned.
Former U.S. officials and cyber security scholars said Syria has a demonstrated cyber attack capability and could retaliate against anticipated Western military strikes against it.
The US wants to punish Syria for its suspected chemical weapons attack against civilians in the country's two-year-old civil war.
According to the Washington Times, Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of Homeland Security, said that it is foreseeable that Syrian state-sponsored or state-sympathetic hackers could seek to retaliate against U.S., Israeli or Western interests.
Republican James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the United States has already seen regional cyber actors, such as the Syrian Electronic Army, conduct attacks on U.S. targets
According to the report, the Syrian Electronic Army has successfully attacked computer networks used by U.S. media outlets.
Hackers can relatively easily hide their tracks from all but the most extensive and time-consuming forensic efforts, but the Syrian Electronic Army has publicly claimed these attacks, the report said.
Islamic hackers whom U.S. officials have linked to Iran have launched a series of increasingly powerful cyberattacks against the websites of major U.S. banks for almost a year, it added.
According to the report, large U.S. financial institutions probably have the best cyber security of any nongovernmental entity, yet their websites have been driven offline by repeated attacks.
Hackers also have demonstrated that they could take over computer control systems that operate chemical, electrical and water and sewage treatment plants. They also can hack into transportation networks.
Adam M. Segal, a cybersecurity scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, said that any US response to a Syrian attack might well not be visible.
Cyberattacks are now 'an integral part of modern warfare', Langevin, who has led efforts in Congress to pass legislation designed to shore up the nation's cyberdefenses, said.
