Officials: Cyber strikes wielded by US against Iranian air defenses

The U.S. was confirmed by officials to have leveraged cyber weapons to compromise Iran's air missile defense systems as part of last year's Operation Midnight Hammer, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Iran has also been stopped from targeting U.S. warplanes with surface-to-air missiles following a separate cyberattack against a military system adjacent to nuclear sites across the country, said the officials. Additional details regarding the device leveraged by the U.S. military in its cyber strikes against Iran were not disclosed. Neither the Cyber Command nor the Defense Department has commented on the officials' revelations. Such a development comes after other officials have disclosed the U.S.'s deployment of cyber strikes in Venezuela as part of efforts to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

"...[B]oth of these operations reflect the routinization of the use of cyber capabilities during military operations, and we should expect to see more of these in the future. In my view, this is a good thing, because it suggests we are moving beyond seeing cyber as a unique, exquisite (and dangerous) capability," said Erica Lonergan, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.