Analysis: Strike on Syria could trigger retaliatory attacks, cyberwar

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Analysis: Strike on Syria could trigger retaliatory attacks, cyberwar

Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad carry their weapons as they move during what they said was an operation to push rebels from the road between Dahra Abd Rabbo village and Castello in Aleppo May 27, 2013.

REUTERS/George Ourfalian
By Warren Strobel and David Alexander

WASHINGTON | Thu Aug 29, 2013 1:09am EDT

(Reuters) - It's a truism often repeated in the Pentagon and across the U.S. security establishment: In war, the enemy gets a vote.

A U.S.-led cruise missile attack on Syria in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons, which seems increasingly likely in the coming days, could provoke reprisals from Damascus and its backers, ranging from retaliatory missile strikes to terrorist attacks and cyberwar, according to government officials and private analysts.

U.S. military commanders are preparing contingency plans for a potential counter-strike by Syria's military, defense officials said. The officials expressed confidence that the United States and U.S. regional allies such as Israel could deter or neutralize an immediate response from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A European defense official said the purpose of building up large forces near Syria - mostly in the form of naval assets - was to deter Assad.

"The important thing is to have enough force to control the escalatory response," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Even so, "there is no military action without risk, and a punitive strike on Syrian regime forces would carry some. Weapons could hit unintended targets, perhaps killing civilians," Jeffrey White of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank wrote this week. "The regime could strike back in unexpected ways against U.S. and allied interests, or it could resort to further (chemical weapons) attacks inside Syria."

Syria and its close regional ally, Iran, both are widely believed to have ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and other U.S. allies nearby, such as Turkey and Jordan.

Hezbollah, the Shi'ite militia backed by Tehran and fighting on Assad's side in Syria, has tens of thousands of short-range rockets in southern Lebanon, near Israel's border.

Many analysts predict that Syria and its allies will avoid a direct conflict with the United States and opt instead for an "asymmetric response" aimed at Western vulnerabilities - terror or cyber attacks, for example.

Assad also could opt not to respond to a strike, hoping to wait out the U.S. and allied military threat.

A U.S. official with experience in the Middle East said that Washington also is concerned that Iran could turn up the heat in Iraq. So far, resurgent violence by Sunni militants there has not been answered with retaliation from Shi'ite militias with ties to Tehran.

There are still militias in Iraq "that would respond most likely if the Iranians put pressure on them," said the official, who is not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. "It's something that's of concern, and something that's on everybody's minds."

AVOIDING 'SHORTSIGHTED' ACTION

The potential for retaliation by Syria or its allies is among the growing concerns in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere about President Barack Obama's moves toward launching missile strikes against Syria in light of its apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians outside Damascus on August 21.

Some lawmakers and analysts say they worry that Washington could be sucked into Syria's 2-1/2-year-old civil war - something Obama has long resisted. Others argue that a few volleys of missiles aimed at Syrian military facilities would have little effect, and might even embolden Assad.

"It is vital we avoid shortsighted military action that would have little impact on the long-term trajectory of the conflict. We can't simply launch a few missiles and hope for the best," Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday.

'LET'S JUST HUNKER DOWN'

How Syria itself will respond will be key, although many analysts expect Assad initially will simply absorb any strikes as long as they do not appear intended to decapitate his government.

"I think the calculation will be, 'Let's just hunker down, take what we think will be a limited series of strikes and then just live to fight another day,'" said Shawn Brimley of the Center for a New American Security.

"I'd be surprised if Assad tried to respond because that would just further draw the United States into an engagement," said Brimley, who recently served on Obama's National Security Council staff. "He probably has the calculation that if the United States becomes decisively engaged that he's unlikely to survive."

Iran's military chief of staff, Hassan Firouzabadi, was quoted by a state-run Iranian news agency on Wednesday as promising that "any attack on Syria would burn down Israel."

But Iran seems unlikely to directly attack Israel, which almost certainly would deliver a robust military response. And Iran's newly inaugurated president, Hassan Rouhani, took office promising to improve Tehran's foreign relations.

Iran could turn to Hezbollah, however, to accomplish its goals.

"A Hezbollah attack on Israel is likely, and in fact some are speculating about yet another Hezbollah-Israeli war in Lebanon," said Hayat Alvi, a lecturer in Middle East studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

"Iran and Syria can target coalition cyber-based infrastructure and other potential targets," Alvi added. "They prove to be quite capable in that domain."

A pro-Hezbollah religious leader, Sheikh Afif Nabulsi, warned on Tuesday that a U.S. strike on Syria "would be met by harsh responses against U.S. interests in the region and against Israel directly," according to Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper.

Yet Hezbollah's calculations might be complex too.

The group has sent thousands of fighters into Syria to help Assad quash mostly Sunni rebels, stretching its capabilities and sparking apparent attacks against it by Sunnis back in Lebanon.

"Hezbollah may say, 'Actually, I don't want to get sucked in further over Assad's poor decision to use chemical weapons,'" said Matthew Levitt, author of a book on Hezbollah that is due to be released next week.

Iran, Syria and Hezbollah "are all inclined to do the asymmetric thing," Levitt said.

Hezbollah's most likely response, he said, will be to tell operatives already in the field who are planning violent attacks "to speed up."

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Patricia Zengerle and Peter Apps in London; Editing by David Lindsey and Paul Simao)

 

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Analysis: Syria, aided by Iran, could strike back at U.S. in cyberspace

A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

By Joseph Menn
SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:07am EDT

(Reuters) - If the United States attacks Syria, it will be the first time it strikes a country that is capable of waging retaliatory cyberspace attacks on American targets.

The risk is heightened by Syria's alliance with Iran, which has built up its cyber capability in the past three years, and already gives the country technical and other support. If Iran stood with Syria in any fray with the United States that would significantly increase the cyber threat, security experts said.

Organized cyber attacks have already been carried out by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a hacking group loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. It has disrupted the websites of U.S. media and Internet companies and is now threatening to step up such hacking if Washington bombs Damascus.

"It's likely that the Syrian Electronic Army does something in response, perhaps with some assistance from Iranian-related groups," said former White House cybersecurity and counter terror advisor Richard Clarke.

Little is known about the hackers behind the Syrian Electronic Army, and there is no evidence that the group is capable of destructive attacks on critical infrastructure.

However, former U.S. National Security Agency director Michael Hayden told Reuters that the SEA "sounds like an Iranian proxy," and it could have much greater ability than it has displayed.

Thus far, the SEA's most disruptive act was in April when it broke into the Twitter account of the Associated Press and sent fictional tweets about explosions at the White House. The false messages sent the stock market into a downward spiral that, for a short time, erased more than $100 billion in value.

In an email to Reuters on Wednesday, the SEA said if the U.S. military moves against Syria "our targets will be different."

"Everything will be possible if the U.S. begins hostile military actions against Syria," the group said in the note.

President Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday that the Syrian government would face "international consequences" for last week's deadly chemical attack in Syria, but he made clear that any military action would be limited.

Asked about the threat of cyber retaliation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Peter Boogaard said the government "is closely following the situation and actively collaborates and shares information with public and private sector partners every day."

A U.S. Department of Defense spokesman said he could not discuss specific threats, while another source at the Pentagon said no unusual activity had been detected by late on Wednesday.

IRAN SHARPENS ITS GAME

Cyber experts have said that Iran increased its cyber capabilities after the United States used the Stuxnet virus to attack Tehran's nuclear program.

U.S. intelligence officials have blamed hackers sponsored by Iran for a series of so-called distributed-denial-of-service attacks against many U.S. banking sites. In DDoS attacks, thousands of computers try to contact a target website at the same time, overwhelming it and rendering it inaccessible.

In three waves of attacks since last September, consumers have reported inability to conduct online transactions at more than a dozen banks, including Wells Fargo & Co, Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America Corp. Banks have spent millions of dollars to fend off the hackers and restore service.

Researchers have said that Iran has also infiltrated Western oil companies, and it could try to destroy data, though that would increase the risk of retaliation by the United States.

Things in cyberspace would get more complicated if Russia, an ally of Iran and Syria, were to step in. Former Obama administration officials have said that Russia, which has supplied arms to Syria, has cyber capabilities nearly as powerful as the United States.

Even if the Russian government did not act directly, the country's private hackers rank with those in China in their ability and willingness to conduct "patriotic" attacks. Cyber experts have said that Russian hackers have struck at government and other sites in Estonia and Georgia.

The Syrian Electronic Army's servers are based in Russia, and that alliance could strengthen if matters in Syria became more dramatic, said Paul Ferguson of the Internet security company IID.

"We already have a bad geopolitical situation," Ferguson said. "This could play into the entire narrative I don't want to see happen."

It is unclear how much cyber damage Syria could or would want to inflict, said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer of security firm CrowdStrike.

"We haven't seen significant intrusion capabilities from them or destructive capabilities," he said.

Earlier this week, as the Obama administration pushed for more support for strikes on Syria, the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post lost control of some of their websites. The SEA claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Security experts said electronic records showed that NYTimes.com, the only site with an hours-long outage, redirected visitors to a server controlled by the Syrian group.

The SEA had planned to post anti-war messages on the Times site but was overwhelmed by the traffic it received and its server crashed, the SEA said by email. Late on Wednesday, some users still could not access NYTimes.com.

The SEA managed to gain control of the New York Times web address by penetrating MelbourneIT, an Australian Internet service provider that sells and manages domain names.

It could have done much worse with such access, experts said, underscoring the vulnerability of major companies that use outside providers.

"Chief information officers need to realize that critical pieces of their online entities are controlled by vendors and that security policies should apply to them as well," said Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer at security firm Imperva.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Tiffany Wu, Toni Reinhold)