The Federal Bureau of Investigation is keeping their eyes peeled for cyber attacks as they deem it might be used by terrorists to cause massive destruction.

“While to date terrorists have not used the Internet to launch a full-scale cyber attack, we cannot underestimate their intent,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Thursday while testifying to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee who pressed him about what additional measures, such as funding and laws, may be necessary to combat cyber threat.

The FBI’s testimony is related to the recent attack on the British Broadcasting Corporation wherein they suffered a sophisticated cyber-attack following a campaign by Iranian authorities against its Persian service, director-general Mark Thompson who accused Iranian authorities of arresting and threatening the families of BBC journalists to force them to quit the Persian news service.

While speaking before the Royal Television Society last Wednesday, Thompson stated that there also had been an attempt to jam two different satellite feeds of BBC Persian Television into Iran and to disrupt the company’s phone lines in London using multiple automated calls.

“It now looks as if those who seek to disrupt or block BBC Persian may be widening their tactics,” Thompson stated in a speech released by BBC in advance.

“There was a day recently when there was a simultaneous attempt to jam two different satellite feeds of BBC Persian into Iran, to disrupt the Service’s London phone-lines by the use of multiple automatic calls, and a sophisticated cyber-attack on the BBC,”

“It is difficult, and may prove impossible, to confirm the source of these attacks, though attempted jamming of BBC services into Iran is nothing new and we regard the coincidence of these different attacks as self-evidently suspicious,” he added.

Thompson then stated that he does’t want to elaborate on the details of the cyber threat but assured that they are doing everything they can to ensure that the vital service reach the people who need it.

Is BBC Pro-Israeli?

Thompson’s bitter relationship with Iran started in January 2009 when BBC “declined a request from the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) to screen an aid appeal intended to raise money to aid the relief effort following the recent hostilities in the Gaza Strip.”  they defended their action claiming there were doubts “about the possibility of delivering aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news.”

BBC’s decision was met by intense criticism from senior politicians such as Nick Clegg, Douglas Alexander, and Hazel Blears, as well as other public figures including the Archbishops of York and Canterbury.