Iran most likely to launch destructive cyber-attack against US – ex-Air Force intel analyst

Interview China remains the biggest cyber threat to the US government, America's critical infrastructure, and its private-sector networks, the nation's intelligence community has assessed.

This is probably not all that shocking to anyone paying attention to recent headlines warning of Beijing's cyber-snoops burrowing into energy facilities, emergency responder networks, and government officials' email inboxes and waiting to unleash some degree of chaos at Chinese President Xi Jinping's command.

But there's an often overlooked threat when it comes to cyber warfare capabilities, according to Crystal Morin, former intelligence analyst for the US Air Force and today cybersecurity strategist at Sysdig.

"A destructive cyber-attack against the United States would come from Iran before someone else," Morin told The Register. Check out our full interview below with Morin to find out her reasoning.

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For the record: Morin does concur with the US spy agencies that China remains America's "greatest cyber threat."

Russia, she noted, continues to focus on collecting intelligence via its cyber-snooping units. And should the Kremlin launch some sort of destructive attack, this would "be some kind of mutually assured destruction." ®

Flashback – 2012 – US officials confirm Stuxnet malware deployed against Iran's nuclear fuel centrifuges was a joint American-Israeli op