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Iran Hacks US Spy Sites
superapecommando writes "Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps hacked into 29 websites affiliated with US espionage networks, Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported on Sunday. 'The hacked websites acted against Iran's national security under the cover of human rights activities,' Fars reported. It did not disclose details of the attacks.
The Internet has been used by Iranian opposition groups who contested the results of last year's elections there to organize demonstrations and share information about protests and arrests. The Revolutionary Guards is a military group that was founded after Iran's 1979 revolution. The group includes conventional army, navy, air force, and intelligence units, as well as the Basij paramilitary force and various business units."
I'm usually the first one to blame America when I see slanted reporting that seemingly puts our "enemies" in a very poor light, but this time I think we are looking at some pretty piss-poor Iranian folly.
Websites are passive. They respond to clients. They do not strike out on their own. So "hacking" them and shutting them down isn't really any sort of solution at all.
The Basij are a pretty rough security force compared to any typical military or paramilitary group. Despite their unprofessionalism, they are at the core of Iranian governmental security. They were instrumental in shutting down the election protests last year.
Shut up you analyst ninny-head!!! Just because you were right doesn't mean you don't get ridiculed. And now that you've gone all "neener - neener", get prepared for more ridicule.
Sorry about the mess.
It was 29 domains, but some of them pointed to the same site. I wouldn't be surprised if they were CIA fronts. The way back machine has it, but it isn't in English.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Who is the "they" you are referring to? Just to clarify, the Iranians themselves are claiming they hacked these sites, not the US.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
This still isn't a "cyberwar" this is just iran arresting human rights activists and calling them spies/traitor with a thin justification.
Anything governments try is still lost in the noise http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/
I thought the idea of being a spy was to stay hidden. Why would you have a site if you are a spy? Oh...I get it to prop up the idea of a cyberwar. So when you get hacked you can tell everyone , "See I told you it was true!". Of course my next question is for the Iranians: dude why would the United State operate a spy website? Do you really think that the US government would put sensitive info in a website? Of course we are talking about the United States so anything is possible.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
Perhaps you should read the article.
Among other shady things we have been up to....
China (as well as Iran and Al-Jazeera) accused the US in state newspapers of using twitter to sow discord in Iran by creating accounts and distributing false information to get people whipped up during the protests. They even linked to a few of the particularly shady accounts that dont seem to really be people on the ground but gained thousands of followers by supplying news of people being shot in the street and leaders (falsely) being arrested.
It is no wonder that Iran and China have taken steps to limit the influence that the US can have in domestic affairs by simply creating a twitter troll account.
Information warfare on the web 2.0... Interesting stuff.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Considering some (all?) were using Wordpress the hacking may have been trivial depending on what plugins were in use. (or perhaps there is an unknown issue with Wordpress it's self)
There may not have been that much expertise needed in this "hacking".
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:0KLjk6HUgUQJ:www.en-hrana.com/+EN-HRANA.COM&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
First off, Fars news is the equivalent of Fox News in the US. They decide the news before it happens. Second off, the only thing worse than this crappy article with no references is CmdrTaco's poor summary of it that insinuates that the US was funding these sites even though the article says nothing about that being true.
Government related sites are hacked continously, it's just that only few stories actually arrive in "mainstream" media about it. .gov.X sites in the list: http://zone-h.org/archive/special=1
Have a look at the zone-h archive of defacements and note the number of
. . . why would any self-respecting hacker announce it? If there was anything of any real value on there, why not continue to quietly gather as much info as you could? This stinks worse than Pelosi's jock strap.
First it was the North Koreans and it turned out to be some random idiots. Then it was the Chinese, and again it turned out to be some random idiots. Now it's the Iranians... three guesses as to who is REALLY responsible for THIS new "attack"?
Well, the Iranians say it was the Iranians.
It is only Iran saying that they were spy websites. Seems like a improvised excuse to censor their own populace to me. Not that they need an excuse, but excuses decrease the amount of resulting discontent. Just using the word "because" in a request has been shown to dramatically boost acquiescence. As has been discussed before, the young educated Iranians that tend to be the ones protesting are quite tech aware on average, it wouldn't surprise me if they set the sites up entirely themselves with no prodding. Iran is just as embarrassed about 'amateurs' making their jobs difficult as the superpowers are I'd guess. "Oh no! The sheeple can write html! We are doomed!"
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
It was not clear whether HRAI had ties to US intelligence organisations or whether the Fars report labeled them as such due to their apparent sympathy for opposition protesters. The Fars report did not tie any of the websites to a specific US government entity.
This article seems shoddy to me, as these claims are as of yet unsubstantiated. Why doesn't Iran use its magic firewall to block these sites instead of hack them? Smells like a publicity stunt against to me.
And they were right to do that. A sysadmin knows the difference between a website and a war. Websites are cracked all the time by script kiddies. Websites are shut down all the time by lawyers.
Who cares? All this does is attract MORE attention to whatever content those websites were hosting.
Obviously these loons have attended the Tariq Aziz School of Public Relations.
So one side hacks computers because the other side is using computers to hack brains. I don't consider that just cause. Humans have built in firewalls against BS. Yes they can be overcome, but generally that is called persuasion, or deception depending on the validity of the information being uploaded. And keeping your populace sheltered from the outside might prevent the internet from hacking them, but in face to face conversations they will be even more vulnerable due to their ignorance.
On the bright side, I can't wait to watch the wars between cognitive dictatorships once we all upload.*
* Yes someone *has* been reading too much Stross.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Most of these sites redirected to one site. But in all cases, they are minor sites run by random people, just like 1,000,000,000's of others on the Interwebs with negligable or non-existent "security". These are mostly "here today, gone tomorow" type web sites. This hardly qualifies as serious hacking of secure government-backed web sites.
This is what's called "propaganda".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why are all these government spy groups in China and Iran using traceable IP's? Why not just send their spy to any place in the EU or US with enough money to buy a laptop with a wireless connection and do their hacking by hopping on unencrypted wireless networks? It's like spy's are getting ultra lazy and sloppy. Like with the assasination in dubi a few weeks back. Why were the spys caught on camera? Didn't it dawn on them they they should have taken out the camera system to cover their tracks so that no one would know. Instead we have them playing James Bond in plain view of the camera. Espionage is about doing things that don't lead back to you and leaves doubt about who did it and why. Malicous Hacking tip 101 Don't use your own IP address to do any hacking.
Well, the Iranians say it was the Iranians.
Unless you have connections over there, you'll never really know.
It would be almost infinitely funny if it was actually 4channers saying they were Iranians saying it was the Iranians.
Or even better, slashdotters saying they're 4channers saying they're Iranians saying it was the Iranians. Not that I'm admitting anything. I think we can fit "The Onion" in there somewhere too.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Does anyone remember during our own elections where people would forward emails to all their friends quoting quoting quoting quoting some email with less-than-100%-factual claims from someone you've never heard of before?
Was that a cyberwar?
No, that was PR and the medium was email.
Just because something you don't like somehow touches the Internet does NOT make it a "cyberwar".
FTFA:
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Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI). Information previously available on the site included a report on 400 Iranian opposition protesters that were arrested on 4 November, 2009, an Iranian holiday that marks the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, according to a cached version of the site.
It was not clear whether HRAI had ties to US intelligence organisations or whether the Fars report labeled them as such due to their apparent sympathy for opposition protesters. The Fars report did not tie any of the websites to a specific US government entity.
This is not the opening salvo of a cyber war you were looking for, move along.
----------
Its of course plausible that these were CIA fronts, but I'm going to go with "excuse to silence some critics", much like how they say every single one of the millions of protesters in Iran is a paid US operative dedicated to overthrowing the perfect religious dictatorship that no one would possibly be unhappy with.
That would, if it were true. But just because the Iranians claim to have hacked US CIA sites doesn't mean they did. The Iranians are currently at war with themselves and the only way that the current power base will win is if they can demonize the other side by saying it is a CIA planned/supported plot.
The military of a foreign government, with whom we have had less than cordial relations for at least 30 years, hacked some websites.
They claimed they were US spy websites.
They then proceeded to round up a bunch of people they didn't like and called them spies.
I'd call this business as usual in *insert oppressive nation*.
I'd question why the hell the Intel community would use open websites and specifically open websites which keep logs or in other way keep lists of all operatives.
The NSA has more cryptographers working for them than any other body on earth and you think they couldn't come up with a decent deniable, secure stenography scheme?
If you want to let someone communicate securely from inside hostile territory you don't give them a login to ultraspies.com and let the local government see their unusual connection to that site every week.
You hide your encrypted messages stenographically inside some lolcat pictures on some happy little facebook channel for people who love knitting.
(assuming you can find your arse with both hands and there is always the chance that the NSA and CIA can't manage that).
I'd say there's not much chance that the people arrested are any kind of real spies.
I don't count Fars News as "the Iranians themselves". They are one of the least trustworthy news agencies in Iran.
Unfortunately the CIA and such do often infiltrate/use (and even set up) such organizations to sneak into areas where they have trouble getting into, that's been documented and admitted on a few occasions. So in that light I cannot blame iran for being distrusting, and I tend to think they are frequently right, like in that case with those US 'hikers' in freaking iraq (what?) who 'accidentally' sneaked into iraq, that was as believable as, well, uhm, the bible or something I suppose, and I don't think any sane person did not raise an eyebrow on that story.
Mod parent informative please.
Just because Fars said it was a "us spy website" doesn't make it so, and in fact should lead one to believe it probably wasn't.
Never have I seen an article title more in need of the word "Alleged"
As in: Iran Hacks ALLEGED US Spy Sites
Like you are going to believe that "Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency" isn't going to make unsubstantiated claims? (I know double negative, but here it ain't wrong).
Yes, I'm sure that ComputerWorld-UK is really an extension of the American military-industrial-complex. Maybe they're even owned by the Reptilian Overlords. Definitely propaganda either way. What do you suggest, Adolf? We can't let them spread propaganda which we don't like! Shall we round 'em up and turn 'em into soap?
Or would you call Western countries economical stranglehold on poorer countries for "economical war"?
That one really has a lot more claim to the title "war" than someone cracking a database server or two.
Taco, you motherfucking tool, you are pushing your own people to yet another unwinnable war for oil onto innocent people!
shame on you, fuck!
Oh yeah, the Iranians themselves are the embodiment of innocence... (I strongly recommend you to check the TLDs again.)
Ezekiel 23:20
See my previous post. Fars news agency is called "False news agency" by people. Their staff are from Basij and Sepah (IRGC). They always fabricate disgusting (yes, disgusting) shameless lies.
Your original statement implies that the US has claimed it was attacked by Iran, when in fact the perpetrators are likely someone else. That is not the case. The Iranian government is claiming it attacked these websites because of alleged US espionage.
Also, let me clarify my original reply. By "the Iranians themselves", I meant "the Iranian government". Second, the government and their controlled media outlets may not be particularly trustworthy, but it's obvious that this was a release sanctioned by the Iranian government. If you don't believe Fars, see also: Link to official Iranian govt news.
To summarize: The US didn't blame them. They made this claim themselves, apparently as a PR move to justify shutting down human rights websites and arresting innocent people, and as an attempt to drum up more anti-US sentiment.
This latest blurb shouldnt be surprising to anyone who has heard the saber-rattling emanating from Tehran.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
I didn't have any moderator points, so I give you a -11 Troll. There are always better methods of persuasion than calling someone a motherfucking tool and a fuck. It doesn't help to further your point. Just makes you look immature.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Perhaps you should read the article.
You are new here, right? Let me show you around...
I suspect the list of sites hacked will incude targets like Amnesty and the BBC world service which is of course as well all know run by lizzards from the planet Zog who use subliminal meassages in the Archers to spread socialist propaganda. :-)
ps for non UK readers the Archers is a long running radio soap of stultifying boredom.
No no, I'm an oldie, but the only way to teach something is to repeat it often.
If we could destabilize Iran with only $400 Million, then perhaps we are moving towards being more fiscally responsible. That one sentence completely destroys the credibility of the entire article. They should've changed the 'M' to a 'B' if they wanted anyone to believe it.
Good point. Although I'd think considering you have a six digit UID that you'd understand by now that telling /.ers to RTFA is about as hopeless as asking them to not have knee-jerk reactions.
If the CIA creates a bunch of generic Human Rights websites (read: Honeypot), and Iran hacks them, can the US gov't via the United Nations or Fox News or whatever basically start telling the world that Iran as a gov't is hacking websites?
"Why are you godwinning me"
Well - uhhhmm - errr - have you actually looked at your nick, lately? Is Adolph a popular name where you come from? Personally, I've never met an Adolph in my life. There's only one whose life I'm familiar with. Godwinned? You probably get that all the time, don't you?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
in this link on the left menu list http://www.keygenmusic.net/?lang=en
they will set iran government straight if they have the motivation to. after all this is a valid case of freedom - people vs tyrants.
btw site compiles keygen musics. top 100 list really worth listening to.
Read radical news here
At some point (I think we're already there) our computer infrastructure becomes so important to a nation that a cyber attack could be construed as an act of war. I wonder how long it will be before we see a physical military response to a cyber attack. We've already seen evidence that China attacked Google's corporate infrastructure a few months ago. Is this really all that dissimilar than Chinese agents coming to the US and physically breaking into Google's buildings? To relate things to the article, if it could be shown that Iran was indeed attacking CIA sites, would the US be justified in bombing Iranian intelligence facilities? Just some food for thought.
Yes, it is truly amazing how last week you didn't know what you're talking about, and this week you still don't. Wait, that's completely un-amazing.
No, what's amazing is how happily you'll believe the very people who would be our alleged enemies in this alleged cyberwar because it supports your thesis.
Did you even read past the headline that the sites brought down were Iranian human rights web sites, alleged by Iran to be "affiliated with U.S. espionage services"? Yeah, and all the Green Revolution protesters in Iran are actually U.S. agents deliberately fomenting revolt. Also, homosexuals do not exist in Iran and the Holocaust never happened. Official Iranian news sources said so.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yeah except he isn't even close to right, as anyone who bothered to read past even just the headline can see.
Human rights websites Iran claims were U.S. intelligence agency fronts != U.S. intelligence agency websites.
I think the scariest thing in all this isn't the possibility that he's right, it's the possibility that someone with his complete absence of critical thinking skills could actually be an intelligence analyst. Of course, he's no more an analyst than every website Iran doesn't like is a CIA front.
The enemies of Democracy are
Since Iran's government sees hacking US websites as a legitimate activity, I take it that they don't mind either NSA folks or grassroot democracy enthusiasts hacking details of Iranian presidential security or nuclear reactor controls.
"There is no goatse in Iran" - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I can see my house from here!