New York (CNN) Some US officials are now bracing for Iran to retaliate against the US with a cyber attack in response to the killing of one of its top commanders. But Iran has shown it's also capable of engaging in another form of online warfare: social media disinformation campaigns.

Americans may associate this tactic more with Russia, but Iran has turned to this playbook too. While a conventional cyber attack could potentially shut down a hospital or compromise a power grid, disinformation campaigns have the potential to sow discord and influence the American electorate.

In recent years, Facebook and Twitter have found people and organizations believed to be linked to the Iranian government operating thousands of covert social media accounts combined between the two platforms posing as regular users and independent organizations, including news outlets.

The accounts commonly shared stories portraying the Iranian regime in a positive light while attacking Tehran's enemies.

"Iran has readily embraced the use of online information operations to support its geopolitical objectives over the past few years, and has refined a vast array of tactics and sophisticated methods that it continues to hone and leverage today," Lee Foster, a senior manager on the information operations analysis team at cyber security company FireEye , told CNN Business on Friday.