World War III: Iran to launch ‘damaging’ cyberattack in retaliation for US killing

(Express UK) – WORLD WAR 3 fears are rising after US President Donald Trump approved a US-led drone assassination which killed Iran’s top general Qasem Soleimani. A digital propaganda expert has now revealed how Iran could already be readying revenge cyber-attacks.

Fears for the future of the Middle East and the wider world continue after a US drone assassinated the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force Qasem Soleimani on January 3. The controversial Baghdad strike, occurring as the general left the city’s airport, triggered a hostile reaction from Iran’s leadership, who promised swift revenge against the US aggression.

Dr Samuel Wooley, the co-founder of the Computational Propaganda Project at the University of Oxford, believes Iran will likely lose no time in exploiting a new generation of tech manipulation to attack the US.

He told Express.co.uk: “We should expect and are already beginning to see the rumblings of cyberattacks from Iran.“

Iran is thought to possess two methods of unleashing cyberattacks, judging from recent history.

Dr Woolley said: “The first method is hacks against US targets, whether it’s US companies or governmental entities.

“In terms of Iran’s capabilities to hack, they’ve shown in the past, they absolutely had this capability.

“In 2013, Iran was behind a hack of Sheldon Adelson, and we can learn a lot from that hack, and that was obviously seven years ago now.”

Mr Adelson is an American billionaire business magnate whose Las Vegas Sands Corporation was hit with severe security breaches.

The second method involves manipulating public opinion over social media using bots and propaganda.

The digital propaganda academic said: “In terms of their ability to use social media to manipulate people, Iran has really been growing in its role as a primary computational propaganda state.

“Facebook and Twitter have been banning many Iranian accounts.

“We know from work of my team and other researchers, Iran has been practising deception and the use of bots and fake profiles on social media to spread pro-Iranian messaging for quite a long time, nearly 10 years at this stage.

“And so I think the cyber side of this conflict will prove to be potentially very damaging and we should all take it quite seriously.”

The US-based expert believes, however, both governments and individuals can take three steps to respond to the threat of disinformation and misinformation.

He said: “The general public needs to work to read the whole article and to be sceptical of sources online and think before they share certain pieces, as we need to continue to build information literacy.

“Technology companies also need to continue to do more, to fight back against this problem.

“Facebook, Google and Twitter have to invest even more resources than they have in this problem.

“They need to use their massive amounts of money to support regular people in fighting back against this stuff.

“And finally, we’ve got to have lawmakers step-up and actually do something in terms of regulation of this issue.

“What we’ve seen over the last 20 years since Facebook came into the world, we’ve seen an unwillingness to have lawmakers and democracies really touch the digital side of things, whether that’s from a lack of understanding or a desire to see how the free market will play out.”

However, Dr Woolley remains “cautiously optimistic” democracy can continue to survive this new wave of cyber-attacks.

He said: “I think that we have a lot of work to do, but the topic of disinformation and powerful technology is at the front of many people’s minds.

“We’re having a lot of really great discussions about it around the world.

“And so I’m hopeful we can respond in the next several years and be able to really make headway against it.”