Hacker Posts Details of 3 Million Iranian Bank Accounts 145
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Khosrow Zarefarid warned of a security flaw in Iran's banking system providing affected institutions the details, including 1,000 captured bank accounts. When the affected banks, including the largest state institutions didn't respond, Khosrow hacked 3 million accounts across at least 22 banks. He then dropped these details — including card numbers and PINs — on his blog. Three Iranian banks Saderat, Eghtesad Novin, and Saman have already warned customers to change their debit card PINs. 'Zarefarid is reportedly no longer in Iran, though it is unclear when he left.'"
Re:"Zarefarid is reportedly no longer in Iran, tho (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"though it is unclear when he left" (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminder that there are still Americans who believe Iran and/or sadam-era Iraq are/where in bed with Al quaida.
I mean, forget that Sadam was a secular authoritarian who used the fight against islamism as the pretext for his purges (Baath are arabic socialist, and like most socialists dont have a lot of time for theocracy) and Iran are Shiia, whom Al Quaida consider to be heretical.
Of course the US administration suffer this same sort of blindness as well. The fact that Iraq will fall into the hands of Iran, almost innevitably should have been obvious to anyone who understood the implications of shifting the power balance from the Suni to the Shiia in Iraq.
Of course when your in the business of *creating* enemies, sometimes you do get to dictate terms. Once you piss off enough people, chances are they might put aside their differences and hang together in mutual defence.
Honestly if the US gets involved in many more wars I can honestly see a day when a lot of these powers put their heads together to create an Anti-NATO that should scare the hell out of anyone in the west.
Its best if we just backed the fuck out of there and let nature take its course. When was the last time someone wanted to invade Switzerland?
Re:"Zarefarid is reportedly no longer in Iran, tho (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/us-accuses-iranians-of-plotting-to-kill-saudi-envoy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
iran plays the game too, although not too well(and they're amateurs - remember the regime doesn't have that long history and when they came to power they pretty much got rid of everyone working with international relations and operations who had any experience - making their plots like bad b-movies like trying to hire zetas or selling guns to some african rebel). mostly iran is pre-occupied with dealing with their domestic dissidents, throwing people to jail for porno and trying to make foreign export ends meet by any means their amateurs can think of and generally just being petty denialists. remember, as far as reports go and one outside the country can figure out most of the bomb attacks within iran have been actually carried out by iranian factions working toward overthrowing their petty government.
so, historically - what little there is of it - irans current regime has been quite aggressive both internationally and domestically, carrying out murders and attempts at them. what sets them apart from libya is that they're not so poor and they have more people and not just desert.
pissed off at a POS system? fuck, no, that's not the reason behind this hack, the reason is that it was hackable and they didn't fix it, they had time to fix it - but this guy did wise when he got out of the country because irans government has a history of outright killing guys like him.
Re:"though it is unclear when he left" (Score:4, Interesting)
What sort of natural resources does Switzerland have?
All of these wars are about one thing: resources. Thats it. It has nothing to do with democracy, religion, west vs. whoever, etc. Those are all guises for the boob tube crowd. It is all about, as are all wars, resources.
Not making this realization is the fundamental flaw in all analyses of these issues. You run off on a tangent about how the stated goals make no sense and we need to this and that, its not working, blah blah blah. However, if you understand the true motivations, it works like a charm. Not only are we destabilizing the region, we are enriching powerful people/corporations by funneling American tax dollars through a war torn state, right back into the pockets of the wealthy. Its a great money laundering scheme for stealing from the people, and it creates a destabilized region where military might is the only "solution" to peace. Which in turn gives access to the resources and keeps them available for the nations with the most powerful military.
Re:"Zarefarid is reportedly no longer in Iran, tho (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah and arming hizbullah, hamas and having their fingers deep in both groups along with previously arming the PLO is 'no aggressive action' right.. Oh wait, let me guess the Jews control both groups.
Right, it's not like we ever did shit like give the Mujahedin weapons like stinger missiles. We never gave fucking crates full of guns to South American dictators and/or revolutionaries. We never trained people to invade Cuba. We never started something on the order of half a dozen illegal wars in the last 60 years.
Stop fucking talking like America is a shining beacon of justice and freedom, because we are just as shitty as nearly every other goddamned country in the fucking world. We just have better marketing.