Iran cyberattack against med tech firm ‘just the beginning’ • The Register
Iran cyberattack against med tech firm ‘just the beginning’ • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/18/irans_cyberattack_against_stryker/
Publish Date: 2026-03-18 03:32:00
Source Domain: www.theregister.com
Businesses should expect that Iran will conduct more aggressive cyber-ops as the war escalates, according to security analysts.
“Cyber and terrorism are the two levers that I believe Iran will pull now that their navy is decimated,” retired US Army Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman told The Register. “What we saw against Stryker – it’s just the beginning.”
Stryker is a medical technology outfit that was last week hit by a cyber crew with ties to Iran’s intelligence agency, causing a global network outage at the company. The attack represented the first destructive cyberattack to hit a US-based company during the Iran war. A week after the attack, Stryker’s ordering and shipping systems remain offline.
Iran sends ‘a very clear signal’
“The Stryker hack marks the first time that Iran executed a successful full-blown disruptive attack against a major US corporation, especially against a company that plays a critical role in the healthcare supply chain.” Sergey Shykevich, threat intelligence group manager at Tel Aviv-based Check Point Research told The Register. “It’s a very clear signal that Iran sends about its capabilities, but even more about its intentions and courage to execute such operations.”
Iran is a less predictable cyber-adversary than nations like China and Russia. It has been conducting cyber-espionage, phishing, and disinformation campaigns for more than 15 years. It’s also adept at hack-and-leak operations, and nuisance-level denial-of-service attacks. The nation’s offensive cyber teams have also developed custom malware that can remotely control water and fuel management systems.
But so far, most of their cyberattacks to date have been opportunistic – such as those in 2023 that used default passwords to break into internet-accessible programmable logic controllers used in multiple US water systems.
Even with the Stryker cyberattack, Iran “had…
