US Suspects Iran Was Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks

SternisheFan writes in with this Times article about more trouble brewing between the U.S. and Iran. "American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Iran was the origin of a serious wave of network attacks that crippled computers across the Saudi oil industry and breached financial institutions in the United States, episodes that contributed to a warning last week from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that the United States was at risk of a 'cyber-Pearl Harbor.' After Mr. Panetta's remarks on Thursday night, American officials described an emerging shadow war of attacks and counterattacks already under way between the United States and Iran in cyberspace. Among American officials, suspicion has focused on the 'cybercorps' that Iran's military created in 2011 — partly in response to American and Israeli cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz — though there is no hard evidence that the attacks were sanctioned by the Iranian government. The attacks emanating from Iran have inflicted only modest damage. Iran's cyberwarfare capabilities are considerably weaker than those in China and Russia, which intelligence officials believe are the sources of a significant number of probes, thefts of intellectual property and attacks on American companies and government agencies."

Comments

The Golden Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

The Golden Rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.

Pearl Harbor????

[davydagger]

"Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that the United States was at risk of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor." "

Durring Pearl Harbor, we were unprovakably attacked.

It looks we already attacked Iran with cyber weapons and this is retaliation.

Re:Pearl Harbor????

[girlintraining]

Durring Pearl Harbor, we were unprovakably attacked.

The Japanese would disagree. The United States and its allies at the time were shipping arms and providing war-time loans to China and other countries Japan was at war with. The situation was such a problem for the Japanese that they invaded French Indochina in 1940 in an attempt to cut off the supplies of airplanes, machine tools, etc. from the United States into the region. The United States was also staging troops and equipment in the Philippines ahead of Pearl Harbor. The final straw for them was when the entire fleet was moved from San Diego to Hawaii, which to the Japanese looked like a clear sign the United States was planning on moving into the area, and thus restoring the supply lines to China. Making matters worse, after France fell the United States restricted oil shipments to Japan (amongst other countries), forcing the Japanese to attack european-controlled southeast Asia to secure oil (amongst other things).

Feeling backed into a corner, their military advisors decided that a pre-emptive strike on the fleet was the only way to prevent the United States from interfering with the war effort with its navy. So to say it was an unprovoked attack is stupid -- we'd recently cut off oil supplies, were supplying arms to their enemies, and had recently moved our entire navy to a staging area, with the clear aim of moving into the contested region. I hardly blame you though for believing it was unprovoked -- it's what all the (revised) history books tell us.

Mr. Panetta is making the same mistake we made 80 years ago: Backing our enemies into a corner. Well, what happens when you back any animal (or person!) into a corner? They attack, of course. And the United States has a long tradition of setting traps just like this -- using economic manipulation and supplies to tip the balance of conflicts while claiming it's not involved... and then using the inevitable military response by its enemies as an excuse to enter said conflict.

This is just taste of what's to come

[WOOFYGOOFY]

In a related Slashdot story yesterday we have this quote:

'We would be much better served if we accepted that prevention eventually fails, so we need detection, response, and containment for the incidents that will occur.

Really? Isn't that why DARPA created the internet in the first place, so our communication and command and control systems could survive a nuclear attack that we failed to prevent?

So I guess we already DO accept the notion that prevention is going to fail and the worst possible thing may happen sooner or later.

So what they're saying is we need to re-internetize the internet. In this I think they're probably right. To a degree we've de-interneted the internet by building inter-dependent applications which focused a lot on their utility to civil society and not what assholes could do with them.

How hard can it be to integrate this into the smart grid? We have the a large part of the infrastructure. We have robust packet switched networks. This is doable and should be done.

This is fundamentally the problem of modern society; it's what brought down the Twin Towers . We make something like a plane and never see it as a guided missile filled with explosive jet fuel. We build huge skyscrapers piling people on top of people and don't permit ourselves to think too much that this same arrangement of people represents a force multiplier to a determined enemy. Just an easy example from recent history; other possibilities abound.The more technologically advanced we become the more highly leveraged weapons we accidentally deliver into the hands of religionists and other madmen.

There has to be a paradigm shift in ALL our thinking about the things, the structures of civil society upon which we depend, and not just in the thinking in intelligence circles because we need to vote "yes", even "hell yes" for the taxes which pay to make these things not just work, but secure.

We are less secure today not because anyone is asleep at the switch or less concerned with security, but because we are not keeping up with ourselves technologically, in a certain sense.