Iran Plotted Cyberattack on Boston Children’s Hospital during Nuclear Talks By Jimmy Quinn
FBI director Christopher Wray revealed that Iran plotted a cyberattack against the Boston Children’s Hospital last summer, as the Biden administration negotiated a return to the nuclear agreement with Tehran.
Wray, speaking to a Boston College cybersecurity conference today, called the attempted attack “one of the most despicable cyberattacks I’ve seen.”
He said the FBI worked to thwart the plot after receiving a tip from an intelligence partner, and that the agency notified the hospital.
“And quick actions by everyone involved, especially at the hospital, protected both the network and the sick kids who depend on it,” he said.
Wray didn’t specify whether the attack, which was planned by “hackers sponsored by the Iranian government,” would have been a ransomware attack. He did, however, elaborate on the threat posed by such schemes.
“Unfortunately, hospitals these days — and many other providers of critical infrastructure — have even more to worry about than Iranian government hackers. If malicious cyber actors are going to purposefully cause destruction or are going to hold data and systems for ransom, they tend to hit us somewhere that’s going to hurt,” he said.
In early 2021, the Biden administration entered talks to bring the U.S. back into the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, from which President Trump withdrew.
Top officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, acknowledged that the negotiations would yield an agreement only focused on Iranian enrichment practices, and not Tehran’s terrorist activities. They instead promised to seek a “longer and stronger” deal built on top of an initial agreement to return to the nuclear accord, one that would address other malign Iranian behavior.
The administration continued the talks with Iran even amid the Boston Children’s Hospital plot and an Iranian assassination campaign targeting a former U.S. secretary of state. Blinken suggested during congressional testimony in April that Iran’s assassination efforts also target current U.S. officials.
Wray’s disclosure of the plot on the hospital comes amid new doubts about whether Washington will end up reentering the deal. Iran demanded that the U.S. lift its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, something that the administration has so far declined to do.
The fact that Iranian government-backed hackers plotted to attack a U.S. children’s hospital isn’t likely to lead the Biden administration to suspend its participation in the talks, but that would be the proper response.
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