Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

[bemildred]

Source: NYT

WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html

---

Blowback anyone?

[WingDinger]

1. This makes us FAIR GAME.

State run hacking, even dismantling our weapons, will fall on deaf ears. This is a mistake. The Chinese, will see this as a green light.

[bemildred]

2. That too.

What concerns me is it is already the case that these things escape into the "wild". If somebody writes one that can "evolve" a bit, (not that hard IMHO), there is no telling what will happen.

[bananas]

5. A little late for that.

China's been at it for a while now.

[GoCubsGo]

7. What makes you think they are not already doing that? n/t

[WingDinger]

12. I'll go ya one further. When the World Bank was hacked for over a year

the Chinese got the goods on us, as far as derivatives go, and they held our feet to the fire, and so, we bailed out the foreign banks to the tune of trillions. That is why the Rethugs were so ashen faced about the need to do the Tarp, OR ELSE.

[Celebration]

17. lol

They don't play red light green light. It is ALWAYS green for them.

[RC]

3. There's going to be blow back on our aggression alright, if we keep escalating our wars on everyone.

And it will be in this country, not just our interests in some other country, as has been so far. Where will the next 9/11 be? Coming to a neighborhood near you?
There is a limit to what other countries will tolerate from us with our indiscriminate killing of their citizens and blowing up whatever we want in their countries.
How can we think we can win the war on terror, when we are the biggest and baddest terrorist out there?

Stop the wars before they engulf and destroy us, U.S.

[woo me with science]

20. Some sort of response is obviously the goal.

We have been poking Iran over and over and over...harder and harder. Interrupting food supplies, cyberattacks...

Of course when they finally strike back, it will be spun as the unprovoked aggression we need to justify a huge ramping up of military power and god knows what else.

Goddammit, America, Occupy NOW.

We are in such deep, fucking trouble in this country owned by profiteers.

[BlueIris]

4. The situation with Iran is precarious.

Why would anyone want to make it more volatile?

[bananas]

6. Good question - Why is Iran making it more volatile? nt

[sudopod]

8. wat

[bananas]

10. Iran received tremendous assistance on nuclear technology under the NPT

And yet they keep violating their agreements on safeguards.

[frylock]

9. i know you are, but what am i?

[woo me with science]

19. Why, indeed,would we do thi$$$$$$$$$?

[azurnoir]

11. Not only does this make the US fair game we should also be aware

of what other countries we've farmed out some of our computer tech to, this goes doubly for countries such as India who we now find ourselves on opposite sides of the table from when it comes to Iran

[Blue_Tires]

16. Actually, there is a wide-open, multi-million dollar marketplace

of high profile mercenary hacker firms scrambling for government/corporate freelance "opportunities" without letting concepts like borders or politics get in the way of making a buck

Meet The Hackers Who Sell Spies The Tools To Crack Your PC (And Get Paid Six-Figure Fees)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/21/meet-the-hackers-who-sell-spies-the-tools-to-crack-your-pc-and-get-paid-six-figure-fees/

[azurnoir]

21. wonderful-not n/t

[Ash_F]

13. If Iran had conducted cyber attacks against US nuclear facilities, they would be getting bombed...

...the very next day. I guess might makes right to our leaders?

[malthaussen]

14. Isn't this like, um, sort of important?

It's one thing for "everybody" to know that these attacks were orchestrated by the US. It's quite another, isn't it, for the Standard Newspaper of the World to publish a five-page article confirming this knowledge as fact.

And the face-eating Zombie gets more attention? Really?

-- Mal

[bemildred]

22. I think so, although it being in the NYT doesn't add much credibility in my view.

With this sort of "foreign policy" razzle dazzle, I always assume there is lots of bullshit mixed in, and I consider the whole cyber-terror thing to be largely bullshit, and the NYT seems willing to publish pretty much any sort of bullshit if the government tells it too, when getting a war going is the agenda.

On the other hand, I have no doubt some industrial quality worms could be turned out with a bit of effort, along the lines described, but the real point is to spook somebody, to rile up the chumps.

[coalition_unwilling]

23. Half the reporters for the NYTimes are CIA stooges (think Judith Miller). This

has the stench of Psy-Ops all over it (and a huge amount of cultural prejudice and racism built into it). As if the Iranian computer security folk aren't every bit as intelligent and adept as our computer security folk.

Puh-leeze.

We need to apologize to Iran for the bullshit we pulled there in 1954. And that's just for starters. Then we need to apologize to them for the Shah and his barbarism, most of it paid for with our tax dollars. Then there's the nasty little matter of the MEK. I could go on, but why bother.

[bemildred]

26. Here is a perfect instance of Orwellian twaddle from LAT:

Panetta explains Pentagon's 'pivot' toward Asia

SINGAPORE -- As the U.S. seeks to reassert its role as a Pacific power after a decade of distant ground wars, the Obama administration has run into a problem: It’s hard to convince allies and rivals that the enhanced military commitment to Asia is sufficiently serious.

The Pentagon will replace older warships and add eight new ships to the Pacific fleet by 2020, but it plans only modest increases in other U.S. forces to a vast region that is increasingly anxious about China’s growing political and military clout and North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

In a policy speech Saturday to an annual gathering of Asian defense officials, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta sought to reassure allies that the "pivot" to the western Pacific and East Asia that President Obama promised during a visit to the region in November represented a substantial new effort, and not political spin.

Panetta urged his counterparts not to focus on the figures alone, but to look at America’s renewed commitment to protecting some of the world’s most vital shipping lanes.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/panetta-explains-pentagon-pivot-toward-asia-.html

[Blue_Tires]

15. Evidently Bluetooth is potentially a huge liability:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/06/spy-softwares-bluetooth-capabilty-allowed-stalk-of-iranian-victims/

[suffragette]

24. Interesting speculations in comments section about possible connection to Iranian scientists deaths

[woo me with science]

18. Poke, poke, slap.

[may3rd]

25. "Thumbs up" LIKE