US Suspects Iran Was Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks 292
A reader 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."
Re:Pearl Harbor???? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually FDR provoked the Japanese into attacking. This does not mean that the Japanese were the good guys. There were a lot of reasons why FDR wanted a war - some of them valid, but as barbaric as the Rape of Nanking was, these were not things that directly affected the US. Most US citizens were strongly against any kind of war.
Under Roosevelt, we seized Japanese bank accounts and placed a military blockade against oil shipments to Japan. We were shutting down their economy, and there is no way the Japanese were going to put up with this. There is no way that we were surprised - there had to be some kind of response.
Once the Japanese attacked, in view of the damage at Pearl Harbor, there was no way the US was going to admit their responsibility for provoking the attack, so for seventy or so years it's been "Pearl Harbor" sneak attack..
Re:Who started it? (Score:4, Informative)
Iran attacked Comodo before Stuxnet was even discovered
Comodo DNS almost compromised [comodo.com]
Then USA is Japan (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who started it? (Score:5, Informative)
The US overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1954, and installed a bloody right wing dictator in an effort to control Iran's oil.
We stole their freedom so members of our parasitic upper class could profit. Iranians have every reason to hate the US, and every justification for _any_ level of retaliation.
Re:Pearl Harbor???? (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, so pre-emptive wars are okay, so long as it's not the US conducting them?
Hint: He did not say it was okay, he stated that it wasn't unprovoked.
Re:there are differences of ideological opinion (Score:5, Informative)
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
Well, every country can benefit from nuclear power. Most also don't want to be dependent on another country to keep fuel in those reactors, either. Especially when the countries that they'd be depending on have a long history of military aggression and refuse to participate in the Geneva Conventions, and have withdrawn from dozens of international treaties, while demanding other countries turn over their own citizens, who will upon deportation face indefinite imprisonment ahead of a mock trial, if one is even given. The people who currently control nuclear fuel simply can't be trusted not to leverage that access for their own political ends.
And nuclear weapons are attractive for a great number of reasons, not the least of which is, once you're a nuclear power, the aforementioned countries can't bully you around anymore. Iran probably wouldn't be developing a nuclear weapons program with such furvor if it wasn't under constant threat of attack... and whose enemies on all of its borders were receiving large shipments of state of the art weapons from other nuclear powers.
Do I think Iran should have nuclear weapons? Hell no. But do I understand why they want them? Absolutely. The United States' chief diplomat right now is a Predator drone in the region. You can't blame them for wanting to defend themselves -- and given the prohibitively-high cost of developing a military capable of providing adequate defense against its enemies, a nuclear weapons program is the only logical choice.
Whatever I may think of their ideology, religious beliefs, etc., as a country, I can step away from that and recognize that they are a sovereign nation with clear and present threats to its continued existance and way of life. If we were really the humanitarians we tell our children we are in school, we'd spend less time hitting them with the stick and more offering them the carrot. Iran's nuclear weapons program is ambitious and costly, especially for the citizens who's quality of life is already marginal. The only reason a country in such a situation would put forth the resources to fund a nuclear weapons program is out of desperation. They're scared... and they have good reason to be.
Re:Who started it? (Score:5, Informative)
That was the British because of BP owned the oil fields and the communist government stole them.
Not quite. From WP: "1953 Iranian coup d'état" [wikipedia.org]
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States.The coup saw the transition of Mohammad-Rez Shh Pahlavi from a constitutional monarch to an authoritarian one who relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979
With a change to more conservative governments in both Britain and the United States, Churchill and the U.S. Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Iran's government though the predecessor U.S. Truman administration had opposed a coup.[12] Classified documents show British intelligence officials played a pivotal role in initiating and planning the coup, and that Washington and London shared an interest in maintaining control over Iranian oil.
History will be repeating itself, it appears...
Re:there are differences of ideological opinion (Score:3, Informative)
Yet the US constantly talks about bombing the Iranian people because of a dispute with the Iranian government, chief of which seems to be the desire of the Iranian government to trade oil in currencies other than the US dollar. Bahrain with the direct support of Saudi Arabia and indirect support of the US government treated it's population far worse with hardly a whisper in US main stream press and complete silence from the US government.
The US government can not call up 'The People' in any way, upon any issue. The US government is quite content to homicidally kill as many people as necessary guilty or innocent, whether in the name of justice or just as examples, to torture the guilty or even innocent as lab rats and, to abandon all principles of justice in the pursuit of corporate profits. Only in PR and advertising campaigns is the US the champion of democracy and justice, in reality it's all 'SHOW ME THE MONEY'.
No different in this case. Iran attacking the US (just in case that doesn't work they'll through in Russia and China to the mix, ohh ahh), cyber Pearl Harbour, oh my God they are going to kill us all, it's all crap and bullshit, it's all 'SHOW ME THE MONEY'. The military industrial complex has discovered another route to the tax payer's wallet, billions are up for grabs and it is working every angle to get them.
The question is would the military industrial complex via it's non-military holdings purposefully connect those holdings to the internet with lax security so that they will be destructively attacked. Have a hospitals prescription opened up to the internet for hacking so that people will die and they can say see we told you so. Pointlessly hook up power system to the internet so that some script kiddie can bring down all power in a major city for days, so they can say, we told you so. Hook up traffic control so that as many people as possible and or get injured will die in traffic so that they can scream over the media controlled channels 'SEE YOU SHOULD HAVE PAID US MORE, MORE, MORE'. Right now multi-national corporations and the psychopaths running them are a far greater threat than Iran. If the US military is desperate to fire missiles from drones they would likely be far better off targeting corporate board rooms than some mud hut in the desert.
Re:Who started it? (Score:2, Informative)
The British deals for rights to the oil in Iran had been repeatedly renegotiated, never mind that they were questionable to begin with. The British repeated failed to live up to ANY of the deals they made with the Iranian government. The British walked out on continuing negotiations in 1949, and the Iranians nationalized the oil company in '51.
Calling nationalization an act of war is insane. Overthrowing a government because of a commercial dispute is insane. Retaliation for economic treaty violations involves payment or trade concessions. Or do you think the government of Antigua should have been 'allowed' to overthrow the Bush Administration when the U.S. restricted online gambling in violation of the Marrakech agreement?