He cited the country's ability to track dissidents, shut down Twitter, block websites and launch sophisticated cyberattacks within the country. And while NPR said cybersecurity experts doubt that Iran could take down the U.S. power grid, it might be able to hack into the banking system.

Meanwhile, a this week profiles security engineers at the University of Tulsa who say they have developed a way to slow Internet traffic, including malicious data, to give networks time to deal with attacks.

The technique has been named "bullet time," referring to the scenes in "The Matrix," when Keanu Reeves's character, Neo, was able to dodge bullets, as time appeared to slow down. According to Tulsa's Sujeet Shenoi, while the system would not be easy or cheap to set up, "slowing the malicious traffic by just a few milliseconds will let the hyper-speed commands activate sophisticated network-defense mechanisms."

But Gary McGraw, CTO of the security software consultancy Cigital, says the problem is not that "bullet time" would be expensive or difficult, but that it is a fantasy to think it would work.

"It's ridiculous. When you're talking about cyberattacks, it's beyond milliseconds," he said. "It's picoseconds (one-trillionth of a second). And when you use Internet protocols to slow down traffic, that slows everything else, too."