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Iranian State Goes Offline To Avoid Cyber-Attacks
DavidGilbert99 writes "The Iranian minister for telecommunication has said that the government will be taking key ministries and state agencies offline in the next month to protect sensitive information from cyber-attacks. However this move is just the initial step in an 18 month plan to take the country off the world wide web, and replace it with a state-controlled intranet. From the article: 'The US began offensive cyber-attacks against Iran during the presidency of George W. Bush when the Olympics Games project was founded. Out of this was [born] the Stuxnet cyber-weapon, which was designed to specifically target the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran.'"
The moles just have to dig deeper.
I live in Iran, so I'm getting a kick out of this. Oh, and "First po--- NO CARRIER
... chucking the baby out with the bathwater.
I feel sorry for the Iranian people, who by-and-large, are reasonably normal, but are stuck with a crap theocratic government through little fault of their own.
Will BP and their friends ever be held responsible for the damage they've done to world peace in the name of profit for their shareholders?
Probably a lot cheaper than kajillions of $$$ spent on cyber defense...
Tough break for the Iranian people, but like other countries with draconian Internet access policies I suspect that a way will be found. As Cuba's government found out; you should never underestimate the ability of large numbers of USB sticks gifted by benefactors to facilitate the free flow of restricted information; it just takes a little longer, that's all. For the rest of us though, this is excellent news. When the next cyber-weapon gets loose on the the Iranian "Halal-net", or whatever the regime is referring to it as this week, we can sleep easy knowing that our industrial control systems are already air-gapped from the Iranian ones. With that element of risk removed, I suspect the next attack on Iranian infrastructure probably isn't going to be quite so "restrained" as the last few have been.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The US began offensive cyber-attacks against Iran during the presidency of George W. Bush when the Olympics Games project was founded.
Gee, the IOC is going to be cross beyond compare for this. It's their trademark! You can't even claim that this activity belongs to a non-competing field, since both this and the IOC activities are about profiting from being generally sleazy. See you in court.
Ezekiel 23:20
I have to agree with them. Very smart move, and one that will followed by everyone, except of course "Common Wealth". And that is the naked truth, only an idiot would allow a foreign government (USA with their monopoly over key server services) to have such an useful tool for propagating their ideas and policy. Soon, thanks to USA corrupted government, every country will have its own intranet. And that actually would be very good idea.
Better censorship and surveillance.
Remember, this is the country "in which there are no gay people".
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
great, we've created an information schism. information schism = no peace
If governments continue fighting "cyber wars" - or trying to hack other governments' strategic assets, then we can expect more countries to decide not to play. So while it may seem like a good idea to attack countries that a particular government decides it doesn't like, the end result won't hurt that country's rulers at all. In fact the lasting effect could (if handled properly by the "victim's" government-run news agency - and there won;t be many others left when the internet goes <pop>) be that the attacker will be portrayed to the people as the aggressor - THEY killed OUR internet.
It's highly unlikely that any government or military institution would be damaged by a country taking itself off the internet, but it WILL stop (or at least make it a dam' sight harder) anyone outside getting information or intelligence about the popular feeling inside that country and it would stop any oppressed group from appealing for outside help.
All that will happen is that by attacking a foreign power by means of hacking it's internet connected assets, its people will suffer, its democracy will be damaged and "intelligence" will become less reliable and harder to obtain.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Even if it is just the excuse they're going to use in order to cut off a widely used means of communication, it's hard to argue against the reasoning. If they were going to stop at taking government facilities off the Internet and move them to a closed network, I'd even believe it really is about protecting themselves from foreign governments launching cyber attacks. I'm not saying this wouldn't have happened anyway, but they do have a great argument against people who see it for what it almost certainly is: a way to better control and monitor communications nationwide.
- will isolate not only the people, but those Iranians working on science and technology, which will slow down their progress dramatically. Can't have it both ways...
I submitted this same story yesterday (different URL, same story)! I don't even get credit along with DaveGilbert99? Posting anon because this is bound to be down-modded.
They will protect themselves Microsoft's style. Turning off the computer.
Why does the US or any gov. allow key systems to be on the WWW? I'm often baffled when I read stories of a key system going down because it was hacked, or ddos, or virus, or etc... Take the power grid and missle defense systems. Why would those computers need net access? A closed net yes. But when you read that people working there are surfing porn you know full well this is a wide open access. So what benefit can outweigh this security risk?
One of, if not THE best post on the page today, as it exposes the REAL motivation behind this (& the worst part is, whenever ANYONE does anything vs. ANY "totalitarian" regime, it gives said regime the reasons they need to do as they wish).
* Good post, cuts right to the chase/heart-of-the-matter...
(Hope you get that mod up, since your post is the "real-deal", imo @ least!)
Saddest part of all, imo @ least, is that these regimes don't understand that it's like trying to "grab water" - the tighter you squeeze, the more will slip through your fingers. They're reacting the ONLY way they know how... kind of obvious!
APK
P.S.=> The world's getting to be a SAD place where deceits galore rule, & 1/2 truths are the "word-of-the-day"...
... apk
Does this clueless evil troglodyte think cutting the routers at the border is going to do anything to stop the pwning of his puny infrastructure?
Iranian prisoners^W citizens: time to take this putz and the whole putrid middle ages mullahtocracy out. With extreme prejudice.
Walk over Iranian border with virus laden USB key, plug into Iranian Internet and reinfect at will. Has the added benefit that Iranian intranet, being reasonably isolated from the outside world, won't infect computers on the real internet as often.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
However this move is just the initial step in an 18 month plan to take the country off the world wide web, and replace it with a state-controlled intranet.
Here's an interesting alternative viewpoint. Everywhere I've worked for 20 years has had airgapped production and IT networks. If not airgap and ridiculously hardened firewall between them. Other than when I worked for Uncle Sam in the early 90s none of these have been "defense" or "secret" networks, just good ole american factories and communications companies, so there's nothing overly secret about this. The interesting alternative viewpoint is that airgapped prod networks are over 20 years old and apparently just now being deployed in Iran. I wonder when the last 20 years of security tech will be deployed to Iran in the future. Like maybe in 2025 they'll switch from telnet to SSH, or in 2030 maybe they'll upgrade from SNMPv1 to SNMPv2. Could they have https intranet servers in a decade or so?
Its interesting to think about. The whole "the future is already here, just not evenly distributed" thing.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
While the CIA has a pretty terrible track record with respect to third world citizenry, one has to give credit to the ostensibly altruistic internet in a suitcase. It would be an excellent "weapon" in situations like this where the ability to connect would support a movement of the people, whether it be aligned with USA interests or not.
Saying "The chance of a massive solar storm is about 12% for every decade." is misleading. Sometimes it's more likely than others. Yes, the chance, based on our knowledge, may average 12%/decade, but the chance in the next five years is not in proportion.
If you had said "The chance of a massive solar storm is about 12% for every solar activity cycle" things would have been clearer, but the current estimate is that there's a higher than usual chance this time. We don't (well, *I* don't) know enough to say that major solar storms head for the earth with any particular regularity. (After all, it's not just whether the solar storm occurs, it's also whether it emits in our direction.) The danger is definitely there, but I certainly can't estimate how serious it is.
OTOH, the previous times this has happened, we didn't have a massive electrical infrastructure in place. The next time will be a lot more devastating, even if we were to adequately prepare, a thing which we don't have a history of doing.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I feel sorry for the Iranian people, who by-and-large, are reasonably normal, but are stuck with a crap theocratic government through little fault of their own.
Not true. They have the ability to change their government, but they have decided it isn't worth the effort and lives it would take to do so.
The USA decided to change their government twice (Revolution worked, but the Civil War failed), and now has also decided apathy is much easier.
Neither group of citizens should get off pretending like they are helpless victims of their big old government. The government operates with the permission of the majority of the people in both cases.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
10 - 15 years ago I remember professors and others ranting and raving that the internet would usher in a new era of free flow of ideas around the world and because of the way the internet was designed it could not be filtered or stopped. Which given the cost of computing at the time seemed reasonable.
But by 2002 that had all changed. I remember taking a class which the professor had been teach philosophy and computers for close to 20 years at that point. He went into the theory behind "hyper linked text" and the idea and concept of what the "world wide web" originally meant to people like him. The closest thing we have to their philosophical idea today is wikipedia where you can go read an page with links to other pages about related topics/events/etc..
By that time "surfing the web" was not a web of interlinked hypertext, but was a rather linear experience. The research at the time showed this was how most peopl thought and used the web and was reflected in general web site design espcially of corporate sites and news sites. Fast forward 10 years later and now we have apps on our phones. Many of those apps rely on the underlying protocols of the internet, but most take you to a single site or service.
Back to the original point though was this idea that all information wanted to be free and would be free. To the academics the genie was out of the bottle and would never be put back in. My professor thought otherwise and that we'd see a slow march towards fragmenation as the powers that be learned to tame the beast.
Then came China who seemed to do it with the great firewall. Are the chinese 100% effective? No. But you don't have to be 100% just effective enough. Once they did it and proved it could be done other countries started erecting national filters, firewalls, and monitoring equipment.
Now China has something the Iranians do not: a billion people. That is a critical mass for a user base and something Iran doesn't have. But, if the Iranians do prove it can be done effectively, and there will be a lot of other countries watching, then it's likely we'll see the end of the internet as we know it over the next 10 - 15 years as more countries and groups will create their own private networks which they can control.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
born not borne.
"The establishment of the national intelligence network will create a situation where the precious intelligence of the country won't be accessible to these powers," Mr Taghipour told a conference on Sunday at Tehran's Amir Kabir University.
at no point does this interview even suggest the country is going to forego the fucking internet entirely. this is to iran as GSI was to the UK
its is to iran as SIPRnet is to America, but we dont ridicule SIPRNet on the same level.
the cherrypick summary about George Bush Juniors first thrust into this hornets nest that most americans dont seem threatened by at all misses the point entirely.. The state of Iran, which has proven capable of downing our most advanced drone technology, is now adapting formal military countermeasures to combat the worms and trojans being developed by the only two governments on the planet that seem to outright lust for its destruction.
Good people go to bed earlier.
One of the key hallmarks of the Internet is its resilience. As other oppressive regimes have learned the hard way, it's really, really difficult to censor the Internet. All it takes is a few gutsy people (who are never in short supply) to provide links to the outside world, and there goes the Intranet firewall. I'll bet that even elements within the Iranian government will find the lure of the Internet too powerful to resist. Iran won't be able to close off the Internet, any more than the Soviet Union could censor faxes during the Cold War.
So they went for the Battlestar Galactica solution: no networked computers. I can't say I blame them.
According to Iran, there was virtually no damage, it took almost no time to detect/remove and barely slowed them down.
And as a "side benefit", many Iranian people previously entrusted with internet access can no longer see independent (non-censored_ information.
Surprised they don't just drop a nuke on it and say "They must have had some sort of accident. Shouldn't be messing with those atoms when they don't know what they are doing."
Here is my little contribution: https://alkindicipher.wordpress.com/
Can someone adapt it for Farsi ?
but their government is correct about taking state functions off the internet. No state functions anywhere, should be on the internet. It's insecure. No matter how stict the "rules", It will be broken into somehow. They and every state should be setting up their own intranet, encrypted, directed to one/every reciever for the functions of the state. That way, a state secret gets out you have to trace it back to one source. the state.
1. Proxy services (satellite, slow but work)
2. No content = no internet. Same as it's pointless to have electricity, if you have nothing to plug into it.
3. Fuck censorship
The chances are that Iran's future will be as a bomb crater. I doubt that computers will be needed there at all. Their display of irrationality and open hostility makes them a prime candidate for a serious military attack.
Sadly the archeology of Iran will be lost and it does have importance but I would not bet a nickel that Iran will survive long at all.
Has it come to pass that as any discussion on the internet becomes long enough, and if it regards computers, someone will eventually suggest the bringing about of the Year of Linux on the Desktop? Like Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies?
Although you have a good point. Without MS Windows update, because Microsoft designed Windows to be deliberately buggy and insecure to force people to use Windows Update which you can't do if your copy of Windows is pirated or otherwise non legitimate, meaning you can't use a pirated or illegitimate copy of Windows because you'll be increasingly susceptible to malware with every passing moment, exactly as Gates and Allen planned. They may have little choice.
OTOH, they're smart, and have resources. If I were the Iranian government, I'd have an in-house OS built, that would make it that much harder to break into, it would be closed source, built from the ground up right there, in Iran, and I would regard the use of software from the outside as a clear and present danger to national security, which of course, it is.
They could call it "Allah OS Akbar!" As you might imagine, backwards compatibility of every version with every previous one would be absolutely required, as EVERY version would be "holy". (Remember the "Holy 2.0 version of DOS? Like that.)
...and it's happening now in Iran...