The US-Iran conflict has triggered an unprecedented surge in cyberattacks. Between February 28 and March 20, DDoS attacks in the Middle East increased eightfold, with StormWall recording 2,000 to 3,000 attacks per minute at peak intensity.
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The US-Iran conflict has triggered an unprecedented surge in cyberattacks. Between February 28 and March 20, DDoS attacks in the Middle East increased eightfold, with StormWall recording 2,000 to 3,000 attacks per minute at peak intensity.
The ongoing military conflict between the US-Israel coalition and Iran has triggered an unprecedented surge in cyberattacks, particularly distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) operations targeting critical infrastructure globally. Between February 28 and March 20, 2026, DDoS attacks in the Middle East increased eightfold compared to the previous period, with security firm StormWall recording approximately 2,000 to 3,000 attacks per minute at peak intensity.
Following the joint US-Israel strikes on February 28 (Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion), hacktivist groups launched 149 DDoS attacks against 110 organisations across 16 countries within just four days. Israel bore the brunt, accounting for 36% of all attacks, followed by the UAE (21%) and Bahrain (14%). The government sector suffered nearly half of all incidents, with financial institutions and telecommunications networks also heavily targeted.
Just two hacktivist groups—Keymous+ and DieNet—drove nearly 70% of attack activity, whilst at least 12 different pro-Iranian and pro-Russian groups participated in the coordinated campaign.
Beyond traditional infrastructure attacks, the conflict has introduced a troubling new dimension. Emily Harding, director of CSIS's Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Programme, observes:
"The conflict in the Gulf has now claimed several new victims: data centres. This marks a sea change in warfare".
Iran strategically struck two AWS data centres in the UAE and one in Bahrain in early March, causing extensive disruption to banking and consumer services.
The Iran-affiliated Handala Hack group deployed destructive wiper malware against US medical equipment provider Stryker Corporation, disrupting UK's National Health Service and American healthcare supply chains. CSIS senior fellow Nikita Shah explains the strategic calculus behind such attacks:
"Iran places a premium on the symbolic value of cyber operations and is therefore unafraid about who becomes collateral damage in the wider conflict".
Shah notes that "causing collateral damage to citizens and organisations will be the point; it generates psychological pressure amongst weary citizens on their leaders to withdraw from an unpopular conflict".
In April, US security agencies warned that Iranian state-backed hackers were targeting American water and energy infrastructure through programmable logic controllers manufactured by Rockwell Automation. These attacks, attributed to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the CyberAv3ngers group, aimed to create disruptive effects across critical systems.
The conflict demonstrates how modern warfare extends beyond physical battlefields into global business networks, disrupting emergency services and threatening essential infrastructure like power grids, banking systems, and healthcare.
International Criminal Court prosecutors are investigating whether some cyberattacks constitute war crimes, marking a significant evolution in how international law addresses digital warfare.
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