The New York Times reports: Iran reported a number of new cyberattacks on Tuesday, saying foreign enemy hackers tried in recent months to disrupt computer systems at a power plant and other industries in a strategically important southern coastal province as well as at a Culture Ministry information center.
Accounts of the attacks in the official press did not specify who was responsible, when they were carried out or how they were thwarted. But they strongly suggested that the attacks had originated in the United States and Israel, which have been engaged in a shadowy struggle of computer sabotage with Iran in a broader dispute over whether Iran’s nuclear energy program is for peaceful or military use.
Iran has been on heightened alert against such sabotage since a computer worm known as Stuxnet was used to attack its uranium enrichment centrifuges more than two years ago, which American intelligence officials believe caused many of the machines to spin out of control and self-destruct, slowing the Iranian program’s progress.
Stuxnet and other forms of computer malware have also been used in attacks on Iran’s oil industry and Science Ministry under a covert United States effort, first revealed in January 2009, that was meant to subvert Iran’s nuclear program because of suspicions that the Iranians were using it to develop the ability to make atomic bombs. Iran has repeatedly denied these suspicions.
The latest Iranian sabotage reports raised the possibility that the attacks had been carried out in retaliation for others that crippled computers in the Saudi Arabian oil industry and some financial institutions in the United States a few months ago. American intelligence officials have said they believe that Iranian specialists in cybersabotage were responsible for those attacks, which erased thousands of Saudi files and temporarily prevented some American banking customers from gaining access to their accounts.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta cited those attacks in an Oct. 11 speech in which he warned of America’s vulnerability to a coordinated computer warfare attack, calling such a possibility a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.” [Continue reading…]
“Retaliation for others that crippled computers in the Saudi Arabian oil industry and some financial institutions in the United States a few months ago”
Really? like the israeli “retaliation” for homemade rockets, or US “retaliation” for 9/11. Where does all this start?
It starts with the ones who want war. The U.S. employs more hackers turned government trolls than anyone else in the world. That’s the only way, short of shutting down the internet, that they can try to control the masses. Bed partners, the U.S. & Israel, with who knows how much financial support going to Israel? All on the taxpayer of course. One question, if Iran is doing their thing in a peaceful way, as the C.I.A./military departments say, then why are they being punished with sanctions? Might it be to cover Israeli betrayal? Why hasn’t Israel been taken to the task for not joining the N.P.T.? Could it be because they will be the ones who will launch Nuclear weapons somewhere in the world, even here in the U.S.A.?