Another fine mess...

[Emanamana]

Thanks to our good "friends", expect a backlash, Sheeple!

From "TechCrunch":
Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

PS- What has Israel done for US?

 

[waltky]

Granny says tell `em to quit tryin' to develop the bomb an' mebbe we'll give `em the fix fer it...

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
June 1, 2012 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.

Told it was unclear how much the Iranians knew about the code, and offered evidence that it was still causing havoc, Mr. Obama decided that the cyberattacks should proceed. In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that. The last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium.

This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day. These officials gave differing assessments of how successful the sabotage program was in slowing Iran’s progress toward developing the ability to build nuclear weapons. Internal Obama administration estimates say the effort was set back by 18 months to two years, but some experts inside and outside the government are more skeptical, noting that Iran’s enrichment levels have steadily recovered, giving the country enough fuel today for five or more weapons, with additional enrichment.

Whether Iran is still trying to design and build a weapon is in dispute. The most recent United States intelligence estimate concludes that Iran suspended major parts of its weaponization effort after 2003, though there is evidence that some remnants of it continue. Iran initially denied that its enrichment facilities had been hit by Stuxnet, then said it had found the worm and contained it. Last year, the nation announced that it had begun its own military cyberunit, and Brig. Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, said that the Iranian military was prepared “to fight our enemies” in “cyberspace and Internet warfare.” But there has been scant evidence that it has begun to strike back.

MORE

 

[rhodescholar]

Thanks to our good "friends", expect a backlash, Sheeple!

From "TechCrunch":
Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

PS- What has Israel done for US?

The key question is what have you done for the US, douchebag idiot asshole trolling fucking moron?

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says it bought Israel time too - otherwise dey'd be nuked to a crisp by now...

Cyber-attacks "bought us time" on Iran: U.S. sources
WASHINGTON | Sat Jun 2, 2012 - The United States under former President George W. Bush began building a complex cyber-weapon to try to prevent Tehran from completing suspected nuclear weapons work without resorting to risky military strikes against Iranian facilities, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the program said.

Barack Obama accelerated the efforts after succeeding Bush in 2009, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the effort. The weapon, called Stuxnet, was eventually used against Iran's main uranium enrichment facilities. The effort was intended to bridge the time of uncertainty between U.S. administrations after the 2008 presidential election in which Obama was elected, and allow more time for sanctions and diplomacy to avert Iranian nuclear weapon development, according to the current and former officials. The sources gave rare insight into the U.S. development of its cyber-warfare capabilities and the intent behind it.

One source familiar with the Bush administration's initial work on Stuxnet said it had stalled Iran's nuclear program by about five years. "It bought us time. First, it was to get across from one administration to the next without having the issue blow up. And then it was to give Obama a little more time to come up with alternatives, through the sanctions, et cetera," said the source. Only in recent months have U.S. officials become more open about the work of the United States and Israel on Stuxnet, the sophisticated cyber-weapon directed against Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility that was first detected in 2010.

The cyber-attacks provided the United States with an avenue to try to stop Iran from producing a suspected weapon without turning to military strikes against Iranian facilities - all at a time when U.S. forces already were fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sources said. In the end, senior U.S. officials agreed the benefit of stalling Iran's nuclear program was greater than the risks of the virus being harnessed by other countries or terrorist groups to attack U.S. facilities, one source said.

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says bring `em on - our hackers can outhack their hackers...

Experts predict all-out US-Iran cyberwar
Sun, Jul 15, 2012 - DIGITAL AGE: Analysts have said a cyberattack allegedly carried out by Israel and the US that crippled Iran’s uranium enrichment program was the first strike of a digital war

A US cyberwar against Iran’s nuclear program may have only just begun and could escalate with explosions triggered by digital sabotage, experts say. Although the Iranian regime remains vulnerable to more cyberattacks in the aftermath of the “Stuxnet” worm that disrupted its uranium enrichment work, Tehran may be receiving help from Russian proxies, some analysts say. The nuclear program is “really not that well protected” from more digital assaults and Iran will be hard-pressed to safeguard its uranium enrichment efforts from tainted software, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “With Stuxnet, they lost about a year. And it caused a lot of confusion. They really didn’t know what hit them,” he said.

The US has every incentive to press ahead with a cybercampaign to undermine Iran’s atomic ambitions, according to analysts. “I think that it could get more violent,” Albright said. “I would expect more facilities to blow up.” “There is of course the possibility of sending in a team to modify a system in a way that would make it vulnerable, and then use a cyberweapon at a later date as a trigger event,” said David Lindahl, research engineer at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

However, some cybersecurity experts suspect Russian proxies could be assisting Iran with its digital defense and possibly helped Tehran trace the origins of Stuxnet. “The part that we probably miscalculated on in Stuxnet was the [possible] assistance of the Russians in attribution,” said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Iranians never would have figured this out on their own.”

The elaborate Stuxnet malware caused centrifuges used to enrich uranium to spin out of control. The worm, meanwhile, sent back signals to operators indicating the centrifuges were operating normally. After the malware was discovered in 2010, at least a thousand centrifuges had to be removed and analysts estimate Tehran’s program was set back by at least a year. By pushing the boundaries of cyberwarfare, the US has left itself open to retaliation. Yet US officials clearly view the risks associated with digital strikes as dwarfed by those of an all-out war with Iran.

Air raids are “more likely to explode the region and certainly could lead to a conflict with Iran, and that would be very messy,” Lewis said. “Cyber[war] is much cleaner.” Although unnamed officials told the New York Times that the US and Israel were behind the digital operations, cyberattacks allow for “plausible deniability,” Lewis said. “Repeating something like Stuxnet or [computer virus] Flame will be much more difficult, because they [the Iranians] will spend a lot more energy trying to stop those activities,” Lindahl said. “But the defender needs to plug all holes, while the attacker need only find one.”

Experts predict all-out US-Iran cyberwar - Taipei Times