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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."
The Golden Rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
Stuxnet - It's called blow back. USA and Israel attack a country through software and then get pissed when that country retaliates.
"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.
This might be a problem if the US wasn't doing it in return.
If you are actively trying to sabotage someone else's infrastructure, you have to expect them to do it back.
I'd put money on who started it.
I have no sympathy for the US in this regard..
... There's no turning back now, this means war!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Is this like how when they catch a guy breaking into someone's home, they charge him with breaking into every other home in the neighborhood too? Suspicion isn't evidence. It isn't proof. And guess what, there probably won't ever be any proof. Everything about "cyber" warfare (please, god, can we get a better name?) is centered around deception. But if we're going to play the "I have in my hands the names of members of congress known to be in the communist party" rhetoric game... Well, Stuxnet did recently come up from behind them and ruin a lot of very expensive equipment... which many people suspect Israel and the United States to have jointly produced. Are we going to sit here and cry about how two sovereign powers ganged up on a third and then (whine! boo hoo! oh noes!) the third decided to give the other two a bloody nose right back?
Propaganda. That's all this is. Rumors, hints, allegations, and nothing of any substance. Whoopde-fuckin-do. Neither side can be believed -- all the players are lying, cheating bastards when it suits their own political purposes. Hell, everytime some terrorist blows himself up in a public square, dozens of groups come forward to claim responsibility... and governments are no different. Publicity whoring is nothing new...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
And they have weapons of mass destruction just like Iraq
So let me get this straight...it's impossible to say with certainty who's behind the attacks...but it is possible to say with certainty who downloaded a song or movie?...seems like the government is acknowledging that an IP address doesn't equal a person (or even nation for that matter).
I know it's an over simplification...call it hyperbole to make a point.
Because "American Intelligence Officials" are always reliable. They've never lied about anything ever before.
'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.
However, each side believes their national infrastructure was sabotaged, and that they sabotaged the others weapons program.
Both suffer from their respective militaries being infused into their very fabric, thus valid targets are practically moot.
Do you REALLY believe the modern, current government of the us or any country is the right, proper, and most capable place for "securing" anything? Do you believe a centralized, procedurized and standardized approach to security is the most effective one?
I would argue the breaches, not the protections are mainly due to government action and inaction. The government should protect public sytems- eg those owned by the federal and state governments and critical to its operation. The private concerns should do the same for theres. Like other aspects of modern warfare, a decentralized method of planning, offense and defense is the best strategy (IMHO).
If there was ever a "cyber-Pearl Harbor", then Iran was Hawai, and USA were playing the role of Japan. Stuxnet was the first strike, you know...
I want off this planet, immediately. I can't...I can't facepalm hard enough when I hear shit like this.
Morons weaponizing the internet. It's the idiot kid who needs to prove he's a hard ass to everyone else in the sandbox.
I am John Hurt.
Cyber war is like the war on drugs. Like the war on terror. Like all of the other 'wars' that are not wars at all. If this is Iran's idea of war then I say bring it on. It was idiotic of us to start this shit in the first place. When someone in Iran wants to buy something they go to a store. Disabling their internets would just slightly invonvenience them. For us it would be more than just a slight inconvenience. It would be a serious inconvenience.
If the new idea of "war" is not to kill anyone, but instead to just disable some web sites well that's a new world order that I can back enthusiastically. Maybe the world will be civilized enough some day to fight wars completely in cyber-space through special video games approved by both sides.
The idea of a cyber Pearl Harbor is one of the most idiotic things I've heard in a while. What these idiots don't seem to understand is that 'information super highway' is just a figure of speech. There is no actual highway or anything.
"We won't succeed in preventing a cyber attack through improved defenses alone," Mr. Panetta said. "If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant, physical destruction in the United States or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action against those who would attack us to defend this nation when directed by the president. For these kinds of scenarios, the department has developed that capability to conduct effective operations to counter threats to our national interests in cyberspace."
This statement is so clearly insane that I don't even know what to say in response except it's not the Iranians that scare me. It's my own fucking idiotic shit-for-brains government. I can just imagine these violent idiots starting a war based on some random Iranian dude taking down some e-commerce sites. Ooh, Americans are not able to complete their Amazon orders for a few hours. Boohoo. Let's go to war.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
How perceptive. Now observe as I do the same.
I'm glad this article came up on Slashdot cause Lord knows Facebook is tired of my political commentary, and in the middle of the night too so maybe somebody will actually see my comment, and understand when I say this accusation IS COMPLETE HORSESHIT.
Iran did not launch any fucking "cyber attack." This is nothing more than a convenient excuse drummed up by the U.S. to help justify an invasion. They have been searching high and low for a good excuse for some time. Now the stage is set. When some massive cyberattack hits the U.S. (not really causing any real damage of course, at least not to anything seriously critically important) guess who will be blamed? Why, it must have been Iran! Leon Panetta with his far-rearching vision and insight pointed out not 6 months ago this might happen! Quick, to arms!
which is fine, this is life
but what i can not tolerate is the death defying leap into stupidity represented by people who believe iran is after only nuclear power and not after nuclear weapons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but this has been the human condition since day one, and will be the human condition long after you are gone, with any conceivable permutation on technology you can think of
and yet we were still able to create civilization and all the benefits of that and we still possess all the good qualities you hold dear
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Then USA is Japan . . . If there was ever a "cyber-Pearl Harbor", then Iran was Hawai, and USA were playing the role of Japan. Stuxnet was the first strike, you know...
On the contrary, Stuxnet wasn't "Pearl Harbor", it was Kursk, where the US is the Russians and Iran is the Germans. Specifically Stuxnet is the counter-preparation fire to delay, disorganize, and confuse them, but it won't ultimately stop them. Stopping them would take wise leaders, and Iran has fanatics. Pearl Harbor was a strike on a nation at peace with the attacker, and the counter-preparation fire at Kursk was a strike against an adversary at war that is preparing a deadly move - in Iran's case, nuclear weapons. Iran considers itself at war with the United States and Israel, and will probably extend that to Europe. Why do you think missile defenses provided by the US are going into Europe? Hint: It isn't to defend against an American attack. It is related to the fact that Iran has been observed redesigning their long range Shahab 3 missile warheads, replacing the conventional shape with a spherical nuclear payload.
Fire Support at the Battle of Kursk
Just after 0200 on 5 July 1943, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov received the call he had been waiting for. It was General Pukhov, commander of the Thirteenth Army, reporting that he had captured a German sapper. After some "persuasion,” the sapper stated that the anticipated German offensive against the Kursk salient would commence at 0300, less than an hour away. There was no time to lose. Without hesitation, Zhukov turned to Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, commander of the Central Front, and ordered the artillery counter-preparation to begin immediately.1
At 0220, 10 minutes before German preparatory fires were to begin, the Central Front’s command post trembled as more than 600 Soviet howitzers, Katyushas2 and mortars opened fire on known and templated German artillery positions. This counter-preparation lasted for only 30 minutes but had a devastating impact on unsuspecting German forces preparing to attack. German artillery was unable to return fire in any organized manner until 0445, delaying the attack until 0530—two and one half-hours behind schedule.3
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"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"
Assuming such attacks took place then it would have consisted of phishing attacks against unsecured Windows desktops and there's no evidence it came from Iran. It isn't beyond the bounds of probability that US intelligence fakes cyber-attacks and then blamed Iran.
AccountKiller
"Which ignores the fact that Britain had legally secured the mineral rights to virtually all of Iran
You mean IRAN was going to take back what the British had previously stolen from them, their own oil. link
AccountKiller