Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Iran Blamed For Major Cyberattack On BBC

Posted by samzenpus on from the who's-to-blame? dept.

Qedward writes "Iran is privately being blamed for a major cyberattack on the BBC that blocked access to its popular Persian TV service and disrupted the Corporation's IT using a denial-of-service attack. The multi-pronged March 2 attack took down much of the BBC's email, overloaded its telephone switchboard with automatic phone calls, and blocked a satellite feed for the BBC Persian station. BBC servers were also on the receiving end of a DDoS. In an unprecedented tactic, the BBC has trailed a speech to be given this week to the Royal Television Society in which Director General Mark Thompson will mention the attacks in some detail while stopping short of formally naming Iran as the perpetrator."

8 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Beats real war any day by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd rather have countries launching lame DDoS's than launching missiles.

    And I wouldn't mind living in a world where everyone put down their guns and just started being dicks to each other on the internet instead. Besides, in that world, all us losers on /. could finally be the badass war heroes who women want to sleep with.

    Of course, most will probably just use both the internet AND their guns/missiles.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Beats real war any day by Sir_Sri · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unlikely. The British empire combined with the SU would have defeated Germany and Italy. The issue is more the state of europe at the end of it all. One can reasonably presume the soviets would have been farther west and the british not as far east proportionately. But without the US the war might have taken a very different flavour, the british forming the southern or northern flanks of a combined operation, that sort of thing. Africa would have probably ended up basically the same, given that the British controlled the med and the surface of the atlantic by the time the US entered the war. Asia is a different mess, because the US and britain entered the war at the same time. I'm not sure the Japanese could have gone after the allies minus the US in quite so grandiose a way.

      From the moment the germans failed to force the soviets to capitulate in barbarossa they were doomed (and that was about 3 weeks after the US entered the war, so not much the US did). How europe would have been carved up between the british and soviets would have been very different without the americans on the british side to be sure.

      Besides that, it's sort of a nonsense statement. A lot has happened since 1945. 70 years before WW2 the world looked at germany as a beacon of political progress. Just because the US picked the right war 70 years ago doesn't mean it was right or wrong about anything in particular that has happened since. If you really want to air 70 year old dirty laundry why did the US do bugger all when their oldest friend was being marched over by the Nazi's? Right. Being right once doesn't make you always right.

      Britain and france were on the right side of WW2 also, and what did that get them. Suez, Algeria, Vietnam etc. etc. aren't exactly beacons of justice, and the US has just as much dirty laundry post ww2 as they do.

    2. Re:Beats real war any day by cpu6502 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >>>who had a growing influense over Mosaddeq.

      False.

      Saying Mosaddeq was communist is like the idiots who claim Obama is communist. There's no truth to it. (And even if either of those 2 things were true, that's what elections are for: So the people can remove the president. No need for outside military interference.)

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    3. Re:Beats real war any day by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They didn't create the Taliban, but they supported the same exact people who turned into the Taliban or warlords of varying degrees of acceptability.

      It's completely disingenuous to argue that because the Taliban didn't formally exist until the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, the US couldn't have had a hand in creating them. The only reason we don't like the Taliban right now is because they're fighting us instead of someone we don't like. That's it. If the Taliban would be fighting Al Qaeda, we wouldn't care how many girls they keep out of schools, or how many people they execute for blasphemy. But since they don't, we pretend we do.

      So don't even try the argument that the US somehow didn't support the same people we're trying to kill now. The only thing that has changed is who the Taliban are against. And it just so happens to be us.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    4. Re:Beats real war any day by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You missed the point. It is hypocritical of you if the only time you dislike rapists is when they rape you, but you are fine if they are raping someone else.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
  2. Pure propaganda. by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone else sick of these re-runs? For the past month the anti-Iranian propaganda has really ratcheted up. We're seeing the same tactics they used to scare the public in to supporting an invasion of Iraq.

    1. Re:Pure propaganda. by cpu6502 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Therefore we should cut-off food and starve 1 million Iranians just like we starved 1 million Iraqis during the 1990s embargo. And when that doesn't work (because it won't), we should bomb the hell out of them and kill (or maim) another 1 million innocent men, women, and children like we did in Iraq in 2002 to 2011.

      Why don't we listen to the head of Israel's Mossad who said, "Iran is not an existential threat to us." Therefore there's no need for us to go over there and start starving or outright killing people. I don't understand this desire of the U.S. or its people to hold the record for the most corpses created during the last three decades. It reminds me of how another nation circa 1931 to 39. (No not Germany..... Japan in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam because they needed oil and natural resources.)

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
  3. Re:FOR AMERICA WAR IS PEACE MORE THAN ANY OTHER VA by Rakishi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.

    If you think the Soviet Union wasn't using every dirty trick they knew to get pro-communists in power in those same countries you listed then you're delusional. Also, if you don't think they have done every legal and illegal thing they could have to maintain their hold over those "democratic" communist parties you're even more delusional. Of course, the Soviets had no legal mandate to ever release their records of such things.

    So yes there was a conspiracy in the same way as there was a giant pro-US conspiracy, a giant game of chess played across the globe at hideous cost.