Iran Claims New Cyber Attack On Its Nuclear Plants, Blames US and Allies 289
judgecorp writes "Iran has reported that its nuclear facilities are under a sustained cyber attack which it blames on the U.S., UK and Israel. America and Israel created Stuxnet, and have been accused of starting the Flame worm." And once a country admits that it's created such software, publicly deflecting such blame gets a lot harder.
Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure you've figured out by now that the U.S. and Israel are trying to sabotage your nuclear program. If the numerous targeted computer viruses didn't clue you in, you must have at least noticed the dead bodies of your nuclear scientists starting to pile up.
Don't you know there's a war on, son?
Bad Idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't kind of a bad idea to deliberately mess up controlling computers in a nuclear plant?
I get that Iran has a deserved reputation for abusing their neighbors, but if the US causes a meltdown, then we're in the wrong.
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on your view...
Most of the US would consider a meltdown over there, much better then a bomb over here...
(note: I'm not saying that opinion is morally correct, just prevalent and in some way justifiable)
Re:Blame someone else for incompetance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disgraceful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blame someone else for incompetance (Score:5, Insightful)
You think the US government couldn't buy the source to QNX, find an exploit, and embed that in a trojan that they convince someone to sneakernet across the air gap?
Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean we should expect to be attacked by Iran?
okay.jpg
You really think civilian infrastructure is safe ? If the US can develop a software that targets vulnerabilities in industrial control systems, so can every other country. Mind you, what the US has done is an attack on a sovereign country. What do you think would happen if malwares started disrupting energy power plants, etc... in the US ?
The US has opened pandora's box, and there is no going back. You can't control malware the same way you can try to control nuclear weapons. Just wait and see.
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:3, Insightful)
we're in the wrong
LOL. What are you, 15? The USA and Israel have done a lot worse than melt down a nuke plant or two. We've overthrown democratic governments, assassinated thousands of people without trial and violently murdered countless bystanders. All in the name of protecting a bunch of selfish brats who think "god" wants them to live in a specific piece of the desert.
Intellectually speaking, I think you will find that the world's events are a lot easier to understand if you stop thinking of the US as the "good guys". We're not. We're simply out to push our political and religious values on the rest of the world by whatever means are necessary.
Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran (Score:3, Insightful)
So you would be as dismissive if Iran bombed the Pentagon or the Whitehouse?
I don't know about dismissive, but since the USA has announced that cyberwarfare is just warfare and thus we may retaliate conventionally against cyber attackers, and the USA is responsible for a cyberattack (OK look, I'm just using the vernacular) against Iran, that's a tacit admittance that we are unofficially at war with Iran... so if they bombed the Pentagon or the Whitehouse, it would be striking back. (and suicidal...)
Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called proportionate response. Iran pretends that its "peaceful" nuclear program isn't producing weapons-grade materiel, and the US is doing what it can to make sure that it doesn't produce weapons-grade materiel.
But if Iran were to do something as colossally stupid as bombing the Pentagon or White House, no one would be dismissive. In fact, it would likely unite the people of the United States in conducting a protracted hot war that would send Iran back into the Stone Ages. Think Pearl Harbor and the response. Or 9/11 and what's happened to the leadership of al Qaeda.
Re:Admits? (Score:4, Insightful)
A story in the Washington Post is hardly an admission by the country. Not saying they didn't do it, in all likelihood they did.
But calling it an admission is just incorrect.
Re:Admits? (Score:5, Insightful)
the "I want to believe" factor is just too good to pass up
The "I want NOT to believe" factor is even stronger for people like you. You've got some of the most reputable newspapers in the country reporting it from real sources (though, of course, anonymous for obvious reasons). You've got Congress investigating how it leaked, the President saying "I didn't leak it," drunk Israeli generals bragging about it, etc. Short of a "Yep, we did it" official press release from the NSA, that's about as good as it gets.
But some people want to keep their head buried deep in the sand, I guess. That's fine. But not all of us are from Missouri.
Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/10/israel_mek_and_state_sponsor_of_terror_groups/
It appears that Israel is in fact using the MEK to assassinate these scientists. This is the same organization, by the way, that several US politicians are supporting openly, despite the organization being on our list of terrorist organizations. Looks like Israel's a state sponsor of terror. Who would have guessed?
Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that like you think that's not exactly what the US wants?
All the cyber contractors have been itching for it for ages. The lobbyists are simply going to going to start to get a return on their investment.
Cha ching!
Yeah, it's all about job security for a bunch of government contractors.
It couldn't possibly be to prevent Iran from detonating the first working nuke they can patch together in Jerusalem and setting off a horrible, and *nuclear*, conflict with millions dead, and plunge the world into chaos & war.
Nah.
Couldn't possibly be that. Even though Ahma-Nutjob has repeatedly and sincerely publicly promised to do just that.
When do we start taking our enemy's repeatedly stated and plainly spoken basic intentions at face value? The world tends, for some strange reason, to want to ignore plain statements and intentions from such people and regimes. Germany was ignored in the 1930s as well.
It feels almost like the 1930s again. Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide again, just as then. Jews are being portrayed as the evil behind all the world's woes again, just as then.
History repeats itself. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like too many people are intelligent enough, or have been taught enough history, to see that the evil & hatred we had once defeated is rising again. Or they naively hope to benefit politically from the hatred, and so go all-in supporting it.
Strat
Re:And the UK! (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK sponsored and the US assisted with the Shah overthrowing the elected government. The UK was the prime player in this because they were the former colonial power. As a result, all the brainwashing done on every Iranian citizen about how evil the west is focuses on the UK and US. When something bad happens the natural response is to tap into all that brainwashing and blame the US and UK along with Israel (whom every leader in the mideast blamed for every problem for decades). So it doesn't matter what's happened, if someone is being blamed for something it's ALWAYS the US, UK and Israel. Doesn't matter what it is or even if it's related or not.
LOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
It couldn't possibly be to prevent Iran from detonating the first working nuke they can patch together in Jerusalem
I laugh every single time I hear this line of reasoning.
Iran is run by religious nutjobs. I agree with that.
One thing you seem to forget, though...Jerusalem is their holy land too. While they may be nutjobs, they're still religious nutjobs, and blowing up their own holy land is a great way to piss off every member of the three major religions worldwide. Iran would be crushed in the blink of an eye if they actually launched a nuclear attack. They are simply not that stupid and irrational. It would be like Republicans bombing the White House because Obama won the election.
It couldn't possibly be that Iran would want a nuclear weapon so that they can participate in the joy of Mutually Assured Destruction. It couldn't possibly be that multiple world superpowers who have nuclear weapons rattle the saber at them on a monthly basis and that having a nuke of their own might give them some leverage. (or even giving off the appearance of trying to acquire a nuke - that's why Saddam never debunked rumors that he had WMD, because having your enemies think you have WMD generally makes them less likely to attack you)
It couldn't possibly be that the "wipe off the map" comment (which I assume is what you're alluding to) was a mistranslation, considering that idiom doesn't even exist in the Persian language...it couldn't possibly be that the true meaning was "the Israeli regime will be removed from the pages of history", kinda like how the USSR collapsed after the cold war...
Nah. Couldn't possibly be that...
Re:LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you wanted to stop nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, you should start with Israel. Subject them to IAEA investigations just like we demand of every other country that wants to have nuclear technology, instead of using our vote on the Security Council to shield them from such investigations. Make them sign the NPT.
Once one country in the M.E. has nukes, the others are now on a race to get them in order to ensure M.A.D. Israel can get away with nuking Iran right now (you can bet your ass that the US would protect them from sanctions at the UN no matter the international outrage). Do you think Israel would nuke Iran if they knew Iran had the bomb, too?
As far as "benign", I never said Iran was benign. But that's a good question. How many nations has Iran invaded in the past century? How many nations has Iran bombed in the past century? How many other nations does Iran have military bases in today? Compare those numbers to the equivalent US numbers and I start to wonder who really is benign here...