CyberwarfareCyberweapons likely to be an integral part of any U.S.-Syria clash

A U.S.-led military attack on Syria may have been averted, at least for a while, by the Russian proposal to negotiate the transfer of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks to international control, but had the United States gone ahead with a strike, there is little doubt that cyberattacks would have been used by both sides. If the United States decides to attack Syria in the future, we should expect cyberweapons to be used.

The United States will use cyberattacks to blind Syria’s air defense systems and paralyze other targets.

Syria, even with its limited cyber warfare capabilities, will likely respond with cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure and prominent targets such as government Web sites.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that recently,, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), an hacktivist group supported by the Assad regime, has targeted Web sites of news outlets  critical of Syria. Just last month the SEA managed to shut down the New York Times Web site down for a day.

Such attacks do not pose a threat to the United States, but Syria could enhance its own limited capabilities by appealing for support from anti-American hacktivists around the world, thus increasing the damage to and disruption of the U.S. economy and the daily life of Americans.

The Monitor notes that Th U.S. government has quietly advised U.S. companies and operators of critical infrastructure facilities to prepare for a retaliatory cyberattack from Syria or its supporters.

The likelihood of an Iranian cyberattack on the United States in retaliation for an American attack on Syria is not high. The new Iranian president appears to be seeking a restart of international talks about Iran’s nuclear program in an effort to have hve the economic sanctions on the country lifted.

Still, Iran’s cyber militia has been credited with launching cybersttacks against U.S. banks. The development of Iran’s cycler capabilities is attributed to more than $1 billion investment the country has made since 2011 to defend itself against U.S. and Israeli cyberattacks targeting Iran’s nuclear program and and industrial infrastructure.

Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, considers Iran to have the “fourth largest” cyberforce in the world.

 Michael Clarke, director-general of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London, notes that “Cyber techniques are anonymous, deniable, inexpensive, increasingly effective, and comparatively risk-free, certainly in terms of own casualties. This makes them attractive in this highly complex, precarious, and fraught situation.” This anonymity creates an incentive for anyone to launch a cyberattack.

There Monitor notes that there are good reason why a cyberattack might not be the best choice of weaponry for the strike against Syria. Cyberweapons may become useless after their first use due to the recipient’s ability to develop defenses against repeated attacks with the same weaponry. It may be best to save certain cyberweapons for more serious or threatneing circumstances. A cyberattack may be less effective since the element of surprise is lost.

Some experts support the use of cyberattacks, arguing that using cyberweapons may be a better alternative as the death tolls is likely to be zero when cyberattacks are launched. “There’s this mystique about cyberweapons — but nobody’s ever died from a cyberattack,” says Jason Healey director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, an international diplomacy think tank in Washington. “Here the US has the opportunity not only to show how cyberweapons can be utilized responsibly under the laws of war … [but also to] display how such weapons are more humanitarian than bombs that kill people.”