An Iran-linked hacker group has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on a medical tech company in what appears to be the first significant instance of Iran’s hacking an American company since the start of the war between the countries.
The company, Stryker, which is headquartered in Michigan, produces a range of medical equipment and technology.
Historically, Iran has conducted some of the most infamous “wiper” cyberattacks on national enemies, aiming to simply erase all data on computers’ networks. Victims include Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, in 2012, and the Sands Casino in 2014.
I honestly kind of doubt what you say in your first paragraph. Their country is getting glassed, why would they hold back? Do you think that they’re thinking the US government will stop if they breach a mid sized company? Besides, it’s not a great “warning shot” when most of the general public has no idea what the company is (this is America we’re talking about).
What I think is more likely is that it was found on Shodan (or similar), researched, and since it’s a sizable US company with clear attack vectors, they took action. I don’t think they specifically sought out this company.
Targets like the US government, banks, and tech companies generally have the money to defend against such exploits, to a point. To be clear, I’m not saying that these large organizations do not have exploitable infrastructure (especially the US govt these days). I’m saying that they have the money, employees, and capacity to reduce their attack surfaces, and also have alarming for when something abnormal is detected. It’s a similar strategy for homes and businesses with prominent security cameras in plain view. The security cameras can’t physically stop a burglary, but they do make the location less of an easy target and cause most criminals to find somewhere without them instead.
For a little bit of context and without doxxing myself, I’ve worked for several large fortune 50 companies on the tech side of things, and many of these attacks were caught and dealt with internally without the need to notify anyone in the public. There have been a ton of non-publicly disclosed attacks from state level actors in these organizations, and they’ve only been increasing, even before this illegal war.
Again, not to say that Iran doesn’t have some tricks up their sleeves in regard cyberattacks. I do think that they will eventually breach and damage some huge companies in the near future, I just don’t think that this was any type of warning shot.