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Cyber Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facility

257 points by stunt 6y ago

stunt 6y ago
"Israeli media have suggested that the malfunction was a result of an Israeli cyber attack." "Last July, sabotage was blamed for a fire at the Natanz site which hit a central centrifuge assembly workshop." The same facility was targeted by Stuxnet in 2010.
- imglorp 6y ago
  It's in almost everyone's interest to keep Iran from getting nukes. So, if any one of them are planning another sabotage, there's probably a line.
  - rjzzleep 6y ago
    Define "everyone"?
    - parsimo2010 6y ago
      Practically every nation on Earth except Iran. Even the countries that have friendly relations with Iran would prefer to negotiate from a position of power. Notice that even after all these years that neither Russia, China, or any of the other nuclear powers have “lost” nuclear material or technical information to enable Iran to make a nuclear weapon. And none of the non-nuclear powers would be happy if Iran had nukes but they did not.
      - payamb 6y ago
        > Practically every nation on Earth except Iran Including citizens of Iran.
    - flyinglizard 6y ago
      The “almost” qualifier was intended for you. Other than that, more nukes on earth aren’t good for anyone, especially as Iranian nukes would enable - not restrain - their aggression.
  - dundarious 6y ago
    I don't know, if Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons is to be trusted, I can identify somewhat with the argument for Iran gaining a deterrent, even though I'd _much_ prefer total nuclear disarmament in the region (effectively meaning just Israeli disarmament).
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      India and Pakistan aren’t in the region?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        As the artificial abstract borders are usually drawn, no, thet are in South Asia not Southwest Asia or MENA; and this isn’t purely abstract, India really is not in any meaningful sense part of the region, and Pakistan, which borders rhe conventionally-defined region, is only tangentially, being more focussed on India, China, and Central Asia than the Middle East (except Iran because borders.)
    - payamb 6y ago
      Iran has no other agenda other than producing nuclear bombs and I say this as an Iranian. Iran has spent tens of billions of dollars in the past decade on what the regime's claims "peaceful nuclear power", ie to produce electricity. meanwhile after spending tens of billions and four decades what we have is a 1000 MW nuclear power plant, and i assure you that's only a shop front so they can argue enriching uranium and making centrifuges are necessary to fuel the plant. Iran has 2nd largest natural gas reserves in the world, because of sanctions Iran has lost lots foreign investments it needed to sell it and/or use it to generate electricity. Natural gas costs peanuts in Iran. We could've made a deal with a foreign company and ask them to build and fuel the power plant for 1/4th of the price and 5 times the capacity like our neighbours (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant) just in case you don't know, fuel for nuclear power plant is the cheapest item in the bill when you are building one. There is no economic benefit (and lots of disadvantage) to start from scratch and enrich your own fuel. I don't want a regime who shuts down an airliner and deny it for 3 days have access to nuclear weapons. do not believe a word from the regime who is killing its own people all the time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_prot...)
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It's in almost everyone's interest to keep Iran from getting nukes. It’s in almost everyone’s interest, absent complete regional disarmament in WMD, for someone other than Israel in the region to get nukes, and Iran is probably the least-bad option. OTOH, it would reduce the possibility of eventually convincing Israel to go the South Africa route, but its dubious whether that can be managed anyway, short of a similar trigger, which doesn’t seem likely in Israel for both demographic and geopolitical reasons.
- ptsneves 6y ago
  There is a bit of a sweet feeling: Sabotage can be mostly done without victims where the only collateral is equipment. Please do not see this as validating this specific sabotage itself, but with such scenarios at least we might have reduced human suffering part of our existence.
robert_foss 6y ago
I wonder if it is Israel again. Maybe with the blessing of the US this time?
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  isn't stuxnet speculated to originate from the US and Israel ?
  - benja123 6y ago
    Yes - it is suspected to be a joint project. We will never really know though as neither side will ever admit to it.
  - naltun 6y ago
    Yes. John Bowden wrote a great book on this very virus and goes into details on this.
    - topynate 6y ago
      FYI, you appear to be shadowbanned.
      - dxdm 6y ago
        How so? I can see their comment just fine, but I'm reading this on a 3rd party app.
        topynate 6y ago
        I had to vouch for the comment to reply to it. I also looked back through the history and saw some perfectly acceptable comments showing as dead.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  >Maybe with the blessing of the US this time? Has Israel ever done anything without the US's blessing? Just wondering.
benja123 6y ago
These are probably the most highly guarded facilities in Iran. Justified or not, it is absolutely incredible that certain intelligence organizations are able to pull off these types of attacks again and again. We will probably never know how they did it, but I hope I can read about it one day.
- yonixw 6y ago
  While not downplaying it, It was probably around 70% "human hacking" and only 30% computer\hardware hacking.
  - benja123 6y ago
    For me that makes it all the more interesting. I would assume that most of the people that work at those facilities are subject to intense security checks and surveillance. Despite that someone is able to either convince or trick some of the workers to do something that comes at a huge personal risk. Human hacking is no less interesting than software/hardware hacking
    - emayljames 6y ago
      The soft spots are always blackmail, extortion and threats. Once they have people in one of these positions, they have a lot of leverage.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    On something like this, I expect the "human hacking" to be much harder, and the "everything is broken" nature of computing to be nearly unchanged. So I expect it to be computer hacking at any place where it's possible, and human hacking only to run around theoretically unbeatable protections (like air-gaps).
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Human hacking in a police state with no diplomatic mission for cover and where nearly every foreigner is surveilled from the moment they enter makes this even more remarkable. The fact that western intelligence agencies and especially the Israelis managed to develop a network of assets in Iran is marvel of tradecraft.
88840-8855 6y ago
When this stuff happens here then we call it "Putin job" and demand sanctions. Just for fun, I suggest we say it was "Biden" and demand sanctions against the USA. :) Aaaaaaand let the downvoting begin.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Why would the US support sanctions against a country that attacked its enemy? I'm not saying that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is always a good strategy, but you seem to be advocating for "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy", which makes less sense.
  - FpUser 6y ago
    >"Why would the US support sanctions against a country that attacked its enemy" Of course it would not. And you can't really blame such behavior because every country does the same. Just do not be a hypocrite and cry a river when being hacked.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      It's not exactly hypocrisy to complain when someone attacks you and not complain when your enemy gets attacked. I suppose you could say that it's hypocrisy to complain about being attacked while also happily attacking other countries (which would be relevant if the US was responsible for this attack on Iran). In general though, people and countries like to believe that they are in the right, and that there is no justification for someone attacking them, whereas if they attack someone else it's because they deserved it or it was self-defence. I don't think we should condemn all self-defence as hypocritical, but perhaps a better argument for hypocrisy in this case is the fact that the US and Israel are both nuclear powers trying to prevent Iran from becoming one. Even that is an over-simplification, though.
- throw_this_one 6y ago
  Downvoting because your comment is brainless lol. Did Israel say they are going to destroy Iran? Or did Iran say they are going to destroy Israel? Answer that question and then you will understand.
ffggvv 6y ago
likely israel because they can no longer trust the US president to not give away the keys to the kingdom
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Famous Iran lover... Joe Biden?
ajcp 6y ago
The real take-away from this is that you have a _very_ competent cyber-actor (Iran) getting pancaked at will by an _extremely_ competent cyber-actor (Israel) in what one would presume to be one of it's most, _if not most_, cybersecure locations (Natanz). Nation-states using cyber capabilities in this way, and the non-response it evokes, is reminiscent of how pre-WWI nation-states would conduct policy and international affairs with their armies. It's something I wish the general public were more cognizant of. We need to openly talk about this type of power and conflict. Otherwise we're going to have another WWI-type moment, where it takes millions of people dying before we realize that the state of the game has changed because of new technologies.
- shoto_io 6y ago
  There is a new cyber study from HP and a UK Uni. “We may be at far greater risk from the internet than was ever suspected,” Michail McGuire, senior lecturer of criminology, said. His new study of the nation-state cybersphere shows that we may be closer to advanced cyber conflict (cyberwar) than at any point since the inception of the internet. I thought it was far fetched, but incident like this show it’s not. https://press.hp.com/content/dam/sites/garage-press/press/press-releases/2021/web-of-profit/hp-bps-web-of-profit-report-april-2021.pdf https://press.hp.com/content/dam/sites/garage-press/press/pr...
  - ajcp 6y ago
    > A cyber-treaty won’t be coming overnight: As a comparatively new area of international relations, there are fewer 'rules' and far more grey areas – for example, blurred lines between Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups and Nation States. While there is hope we will one day come to an agreement on cyberwarfare and cyberweapons, today there is very little in place that can stem the tide. And there it is on page 1! Excellent contribution, thank you so much for this.
  - Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
    "closer" as in "if you listen to the firewall log, you can hear the artillery"
- deleted 6y ago
borplk 6y ago
Keep in mind that "cyber attack" can be a cover for other types of attack. It creates this convenient image of "hackers press a button and things blow up" to divert attention away from the reality. I wouldn't be so quick in believing it being a cyber attack.
- slg 6y ago
  Wouldn't both the perpetrator and the victim have to be in on that deception? Why would both parties go along with that?
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    That's not quite what happened. First, Iran blamed it on cyberattack, then Israeli media took credit for it, because why the hell would they not? It's also not even confirmed, just assumed: > Israeli public broadcaster Kan said that it could be assumed that the incident was an Israeli cyber operation, citing the discovery in 2010 of the Stuxnet computer virus
    - slg 6y ago
      >That's not quite what happened. I wasn't saying one way or another what happened. But a physical military attack by Israel would be much more frowned on by the international community than a cyberattack. In that situation, what motivation is there for Iran to conceal that to the benefit of Israel?
      - ehsankia 6y ago
        Hmm, well I assume it is a bit shameful to get hacked on the very day it opens, especially after the whole Stuxnet kerfuffle, so they may want to underplay the damage done.
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    It makes one seem mighty, and it makes the other not seem as incompetent. If the attack was 'unprecedented', or 'unexpected' or 'sophisticated' then the people responsible from the victim's team are absolved of their failures and mistakes while the other side gets to look good and mighty.
jchook 6y ago
Reminded of "What is the most sophisticated piece of software ever written?" on Quora. Buckle in. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-of-software-ever-written-1 https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-o...
- crocktucker 6y ago
  Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    What?! So I can get my computer infected?!
    - crocktucker 6y ago
      I was eager for some insight into sophisticated software (either deep or funny - I was open for anything); I was greeted with a prompt to enable JavaScript. I still haven't been able to clean all the irony off my monitor.
- IncRnd 6y ago
  Yea, that's what someone wrote on Quora, but Stuxnet isn't the most sophisticated piece of software ever written - let alone that it is not the most sophisticated exploit ever written.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Find me another program that requires knowledge more niche than nuclear refinement processes suitable for the production of weapons, and enough HUMINT to know what to target etc. Stuxnet is probably not the most sophisticated program ever, but it's probably the most information dense.
    - pooya13 6y ago
BariumBlue 6y ago
This (and the recent ish attack on the IRGC ship) is most likely the doing of Israel to prevent the JCPOA from being reestablished and from Iran getting any sanctions relief. If Iranian lawmakers believe these attacks were by the US (they possibly do believe that), they will be less willing to enter an agreement with the US, and Israel furthers it's goal of isolating it's adversary, Iran.
- Udik 6y ago
  Israel is clearly enjoying a great moment for inflicting damage on its arch-enemy. If Iran reacts, it's going to get the blame for attacking (because history always begins after Israel's latest offensive action) and the US will find a much hoped for excuse not to re-enter the nuclear deal. So Iran can only endure the humiliation and suck it up. So far they've shown an incredible patience.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - benja123 6y ago
    I am going to have to disagree. Iran recently attacked an Israeli ship, but more importantly it continues to arm terrorist groups (note I am Israeli, so I am probably not objective here, but yes I believe Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups. Some of you may think differently on that. We can agree to disagree) that are against Israel’s existence. Those groups are constantly either attacking or trying to attack Israel. Now you can argue Israel is also attacking those groups and you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s almost impossible to figure out who started each round. We only ever hear a very small part of the story. It is a circle of violence that will hopefully one day end.
    - Udik 6y ago
      > terrorist groups [...] that are against Israel’s existence I think this is an oversimplification useful to justify Israeli aggressiveness. It's also part of the self-deluded statements of those groups. If Israel was interested in peace and justice, it could act like the adult in the room and try to heal the wounds that are at the root of the violence. Let's not forget that Israel is practically an apartheid state (but conveniently outside its fuzzy borders, so it can keep pretending it's not) and that it's been steadily appropriating more land from Palestinians since it's been in existence. If Israel were interested in peace and justice. My take is that it's not interested, because that would put an end to its expansion and unchecked power in the region.
hogFeast 6y ago
It is odd... Iran has lots of energy resources, is a huge energy exporter, and has a ton of heavy polluting industry...but they are also investing heavily in nuclear energy? Odd.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Western oil companies have invested heavily in solar power. It's a hedge against peak oil and/or global CO2 restrictions.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Nuclear energy is a clear path to eco-friendly future. Everyone is interested with that, nobody wants to burn oil even if you have plenty of that oil. I live in Kazakhstan, we have plenty of oil, gas and coal, but we want to build nuclear plants, we are experimenting with wind and solar generators, nobody likes to breath dirty air.
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    Sarcasm. Iran are, amazingly for such a small economy, a massive polluter and they would rather drop dead then stop selling oil (fighter jets don't pay for themselves, the military owns most of their economy). My point is: the nuclear industry exists to make weapons. That is it. It is baffling that other nations pretend otherwise (for example, the EU seems quite happy to pretend that Iran's massive interest in nuclear technology is for civilian purposes...unf, countries in the EU have a long record of supplying countries in the region with "civilian" technology that was later used to murder people).
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      That might be true for Iran. But I don't see it as an issue, because obviously Iran wants to do so to protect them from foreign invasion, just like North Korea managed to get in position where nobody would want to risk invading them. It's not an ideal situation where one should get deadliest weapon ever to bring peace to the country, but at least it seems to work.
mjfl 6y ago
How hard is it to enrich uranium, really? It was done previously with 1940s technology. No computers required really.
- parsimo2010 6y ago
  Pretty hard. But the enrichment isn’t even the hardest part, just tedious. Iran has had the knowledge and equipment for several years. But it takes time to produce enough material to be useful, and they keep getting sabotaged. Not just the equipment, but top leaders and scientists get killed from time to time. Keep in mind that the Manhattan Project employed over 100,000 people and cost a couple billion dollars, which would be tens of billions of dollars after inflation. Iran has been under sanctions of varying strictness for a few decades. That amount of people and money isn’t trivial to them like it is to the USA in 1940, which was a rising superpower.
  - kps 6y ago
    And the Manhattan Project only managed to enrich enough uranium for one bomb.
    - gruez 6y ago
      But they had no trouble making two bombs to drop on japan?
      - makomk 6y ago
        The other bomb dropped on Japan used plutonium, as did the Trinity nuclear test. (Yes, the US had so little uranium that the bomb design using it wasn't even tested before it was used against Japan.)
    - thatcat 6y ago
      I'm pretty certain they made way more than one, but even if not - that was a really inefficient design. Only a few percent of the input material actually achieved fission.
secfirstmd 6y ago
As ever Israel makes a strong Operational measure but a poor Strategic one. What exactly is the end game that it thinks is going to happen? There is zero scenario in which Iran is going to fully stop trying to build a nuke in the basement. The JPCOA is the only show in town.
- Kalium 6y ago
  You're absolutely right. The JCPOA is the only show in town. What do you think Israel's good Strategic measure would be?
  - stunt 6y ago
    Make sure agreements and cooperation with the west is successful and help the vast majority of the public in Iran realize that working with the west is in their interest. Over time it will help the left parties in Iran to gain more power and influence than the conservative and anti-west figures. Once you have the public support, slowly and surely push them to have peace with Israel. They used to be allies together. So it shouldn't be impossible. But, we just did the opposite. The anti-west parties now have an easy story to tell: "We tried, they lied, we shouldn't work with them.". We added sanctions too. An economy under sanction runs by military and gives more power to the military, because only they have the tools to interact with the black market and bypass sanctions. Not the liberal, open-minded Businessman which is more likely to support more interactions with the world.
    - secfirstmd 6y ago
      Exactly. There are too many missed opportunities for bringing in Iran from the fold to mention.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
throwaway4good 6y ago
I thought Biden wanted to re-enter the JCPOA agreement with Iran? Surely the Israelis wouldn't do something like this without having coordinated with the US if not directly ordered by the US ...
- monocasa 6y ago
  The Isrealis have always embraced being a bit of a loose cannon geopolitically. It's smart; it let's them punch oabove their weight if they're careful about it (which they normally are). My bet is they did this with the US's knowledge, but not involvement or approval. Israel doesn't want Iran going into the JCPOA without their nuclear program being set back as far as possible to square one. The US knows that it's an uphill battle to get the Iranians at the table at all, and would defer dismantling of their nuclear program to the outcome of the negotiations.
atlgator 6y ago
Stuxnet 2.0
- snurfer 6y ago
  Nice. So JavaScript/Ajax frameworks?
  - atlgator 6y ago
    MVC too
- brap 6y ago
  Now with GraphQL
  - disk0 6y ago
    stuxnext.js
pooya13 6y ago
> Iran, which insists it does not want nuclear weapons The bias in BBC phrasing still amazes me. Using “Iran insists it does not want nuclear weapons”, which is technically a true statement, instead of the more accurate one “There is no evidence that Iran seeks nuclear weapons”, which acknowledges the investigation and authority of the international atomic agency.
cochne 6y ago
I think the title is misleading. I do not see anything in the article confirming it was a cyber attack. Only media organizations claiming that it could be.
- mikeiz404 6y ago
  I agree. Maybe a prefix of “claimed” or “alleged” or “assumed” would help. These are the strongest claims I found backing it in the article: “Israeli media suggest the incident was a result of an Israeli cyber attack.” “A nuclear facility in Iran was hit by a "terrorist act" a day after it unveiled new advanced uranium centrifuges, a top nuclear official says.” “Later state TV read out a statement by AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi, in which he described the incident as "sabotage" and "nuclear terrorism".” “Ron Ben-Yishai, a defence analyst at the Ynet news website, said that with Iran progressing towards nuclear weapons capability it was "reasonable to assume that the problem... might not have been caused by an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on removing sanctions".” And background given that 1) a cyber attack, stuxnet, has happened here in the past and 2) recent actions by Iran incentives an action like this occurring again.
bjourne 6y ago
Israel has been targeting Iranian civil infrastructure and is also believed to be behind numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists. Scientists are usually deemed to be civilians. Since Israel has already attacked civilian targets and killed civilians, it would seem to me that by the laws of tit for that, Iran has the right to retaliate against Israeli civilians. In fact, Iran's allies such as Syria and Hezbollah should also have the same right. Israel's use of terrorism against what it considers its enemies is afaik unprecedented. As is the fact that the rest of the world lets Israel get away with it without so much as a peep.
- pepperonipizza 6y ago
  Are they still considered civilians when they work for a military program that threatens Israel existence? My grandfather was a scientist working for the army, he had a salary paid by the military and was part of it.
  - bjourne 6y ago
    Yes, by the rules of war they are civilians. Let's assume that they were not and that the facility was a legitimate military target. Then it stands to reason that every Israeli person who helped stage this attack is also a legitimate military target. Every engineer who touched the malware code, every engineer who touched code for the tools to create the malware code, every project manager to any such engineer, every university professor who taught these engineers to create the malware code, every investor who profited from the military's procurement of the malware code the engineers wrote, etc. Add to the fact that the assassination of Iranian scientists is at least partially about deterrence - attempting to scare away nuclear scientists - and you have a strong argument in favor of treating Israel's cybersecurity industry as fair game for Iranian assassinations. It becomes very hard to draw a hard and fast line between civilian and combatant.
- throw_this_one 6y ago
  Did Israel say they are going to destroy the country of Iran? Or did Iran say they are going to destroy Israel? Answer that question and then you will understand why your comment is essentially idiotic.
bjourne 6y ago
Israel is a heavily militarized society with a strong military-industrial complex. Relatively speaking, it is more powerful than the American military-industrial complex. Thus what you get is policy that favors the weapons industry and those in the military community but which is not beneficial to Israel as a whole. The Palestinians aren't enough of a punching bag so Iran needs to be painted as the great Satan to sell more military equipment.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- howmayiannoyyou 6y ago
  Israel -- politically divided, pluralistic society, democratic government & leader in exporting high-tech, pharma & healthcare advancements. Iran -- repressive, despotic regime & leader in exporting terrorism.
  - babesh 6y ago
    You conveniently failed to mention the Gaza Strip and the occupied territories where the people have no vote and no rights. So it is a democracy for some and a despotic regime for others. Frankly both these states are acting out of self interest. Leave morality out of it. It’s probably mostly true for both peoples as well.
    - flyinglizard 6y ago
      Gazans can, in fact, vote. They voted in Hamas who took away their right to vote but back when Israel disengaged and left them to their own devices, Gazans could indeed vote.
      - babesh 6y ago
        Can they vote for seats in Israel’s government? My understanding is not.
kowlo 6y ago
Looks like this is descending quicker than usual on the HN front-page [1], anyone know why? [1] https://ibb.co/0hjnyq7 https://ibb.co/0hjnyq7
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  More comments than upvotes for the article itself. That usually indicates a flame war. And the comments have sometimes tended that direction...
pknerd 6y ago
A bit off topic, is there any hollywood movie on stuxnet incident?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
1cvmask 6y ago
The Wikileaks and Snowden revelations showed that the NSA had tools to point the hacking at others like a false flag operation. With that knowledge in mind how can we ever conclusively blame anyone for a hacking attack as the proverbial smoking gun can even be placed in the victims hand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7
vkou 6y ago
An obvious question that comes up is: "When will these cyber attacks be properly considered what they are - an act of war?" I frequently hear this question receiving top billing when some commercial entity here is the target of one.
pygar 6y ago
If Iran got close to creating a Nuke wouldn't the US just bomb the site? Iran must surely know that it will not get away with building nukes either. So what are they doing? Iran's bark is larger then it's bite. I think it just wants to use its nuclear activities as a bargaining chip for sanction relief. So why should the US do anything at all regarding Iran? It can destroy those sites easily enough if it needs to. Why doesn't it just refuse to negotiate and keep Iran poor? Iran's military threat are, relatively, a mild annoyance, and calling their bluff and immediately escalating as trump did when he killed Soleimani seems to temper them as any escalation hurts them a lot more then it does the US. I think when we treat Iran as a real threat, as we did with NK, it just gives them more legitimacy then they deserve.
- Paddywack 6y ago
  > It can destroy those sites easily enough if it needs to. Is it as simple as that? (1) There is a continuum from dirty bombs to full Nukes that makes it a bit more messy. (2) Are Nukes not more "hideable" than this? For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed?
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed? Because of a country up north.
    - yongjik 6y ago
      > > For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed? > Because of a country up north. ...and another country down south as well. There are fifty million citizens of a country officially allied with America who would appreciate not having a nuclear war next door, thank you very much.
  - pygar 6y ago
    The size of the sites they need to make the nukes are not small. It's more a matter of Intellegence knowing whats going on there. The issue with NK, to my understading, is that any action there would lead to SK ( A densely populated country) being attacked with a lot regular missiles that would be hard to prevent.
granshaw 6y ago
Just a power outage? Sounds like just a one time issue that won’t have any material impact on their nuclear readiness? Wished the article elaborated on the actual outcome of the attack
poisonarena 6y ago
I see in the comments here that most of the talk has devolved to israel/palestinian conflicts or Israel/Iran conflicts, mostly with a lot of bad energy. I am Israeli and last winter I spent 3 months living in Istabul doing coke/drinking/clubbing with a bunch of Iranian guys who left Tehran to make money and find opportunities in Istanbul. Turkey is one of the few countries they can go to easily. They all knew I was Israeli and they never cared, I met several groups of Iranians in my time spent there and they all had several things in common. They loved to party, they didn't care about Israel at all, and wanted to escape the theocratic clerics that enforced all the rules on them. There is very much a huge portion of young Iranians that have big secret parties and participate in music and things the government does not allow. And I dont think the current regime can keep this up forever. Sometimes I get angry at social media, because everywhere I travel to now compared to 15 years ago seems like it is becoming the same, like all the cultures are just melting together into some kind of Instagram/narcissist thing, but in this case, in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I believe it is pulling the young into some kind of societal/cultural reform. Because everyone really just wants to have a good time.
mikewarot 6y ago
Any computer, anywhere, can be hacked. As long as that remains true, nothing and nobody is safe. The root cause of this insecurity is a bad trust model. There are perverse incentives keeping people from using a different trust model. The US Military Industrial Complex developed systems that are provable secure, but decided they didn't need to bother. Perhaps it's time to reconsider?
Vaderv 6y ago
Israeli committed an act of Terrorism, Pure and Simple.

257 points by stunt 6y ago

"Israeli media have suggested that the malfunction was a result of an Israeli cyber attack." "Last July, sabotage was blamed for a fire at the Natanz site which hit a central centrifuge assembly workshop." The same facility was targeted by Stuxnet in 2010.

imglorp 6y ago
It's in almost everyone's interest to keep Iran from getting nukes. So, if any one of them are planning another sabotage, there's probably a line.
- rjzzleep 6y ago
  Define "everyone"?
  - parsimo2010 6y ago
    Practically every nation on Earth except Iran. Even the countries that have friendly relations with Iran would prefer to negotiate from a position of power. Notice that even after all these years that neither Russia, China, or any of the other nuclear powers have “lost” nuclear material or technical information to enable Iran to make a nuclear weapon. And none of the non-nuclear powers would be happy if Iran had nukes but they did not.
    - payamb 6y ago
      > Practically every nation on Earth except Iran Including citizens of Iran.
  - flyinglizard 6y ago
    The “almost” qualifier was intended for you. Other than that, more nukes on earth aren’t good for anyone, especially as Iranian nukes would enable - not restrain - their aggression.
- dundarious 6y ago
  I don't know, if Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons is to be trusted, I can identify somewhat with the argument for Iran gaining a deterrent, even though I'd _much_ prefer total nuclear disarmament in the region (effectively meaning just Israeli disarmament).
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    India and Pakistan aren’t in the region?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      As the artificial abstract borders are usually drawn, no, thet are in South Asia not Southwest Asia or MENA; and this isn’t purely abstract, India really is not in any meaningful sense part of the region, and Pakistan, which borders rhe conventionally-defined region, is only tangentially, being more focussed on India, China, and Central Asia than the Middle East (except Iran because borders.)
  - payamb 6y ago
    Iran has no other agenda other than producing nuclear bombs and I say this as an Iranian. Iran has spent tens of billions of dollars in the past decade on what the regime's claims "peaceful nuclear power", ie to produce electricity. meanwhile after spending tens of billions and four decades what we have is a 1000 MW nuclear power plant, and i assure you that's only a shop front so they can argue enriching uranium and making centrifuges are necessary to fuel the plant. Iran has 2nd largest natural gas reserves in the world, because of sanctions Iran has lost lots foreign investments it needed to sell it and/or use it to generate electricity. Natural gas costs peanuts in Iran. We could've made a deal with a foreign company and ask them to build and fuel the power plant for 1/4th of the price and 5 times the capacity like our neighbours (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant) just in case you don't know, fuel for nuclear power plant is the cheapest item in the bill when you are building one. There is no economic benefit (and lots of disadvantage) to start from scratch and enrich your own fuel. I don't want a regime who shuts down an airliner and deny it for 3 days have access to nuclear weapons. do not believe a word from the regime who is killing its own people all the time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_prot...)
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > It's in almost everyone's interest to keep Iran from getting nukes. It’s in almost everyone’s interest, absent complete regional disarmament in WMD, for someone other than Israel in the region to get nukes, and Iran is probably the least-bad option. OTOH, it would reduce the possibility of eventually convincing Israel to go the South Africa route, but its dubious whether that can be managed anyway, short of a similar trigger, which doesn’t seem likely in Israel for both demographic and geopolitical reasons.
ptsneves 6y ago
There is a bit of a sweet feeling: Sabotage can be mostly done without victims where the only collateral is equipment. Please do not see this as validating this specific sabotage itself, but with such scenarios at least we might have reduced human suffering part of our existence.

robert_foss 6y ago

I wonder if it is Israel again. Maybe with the blessing of the US this time?

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
isn't stuxnet speculated to originate from the US and Israel ?
- benja123 6y ago
  Yes - it is suspected to be a joint project. We will never really know though as neither side will ever admit to it.
- naltun 6y ago
  Yes. John Bowden wrote a great book on this very virus and goes into details on this.
  - topynate 6y ago
    FYI, you appear to be shadowbanned.
    - dxdm 6y ago
      How so? I can see their comment just fine, but I'm reading this on a 3rd party app.
      - topynate 6y ago
        I had to vouch for the comment to reply to it. I also looked back through the history and saw some perfectly acceptable comments showing as dead.
ur-whale 6y ago
>Maybe with the blessing of the US this time? Has Israel ever done anything without the US's blessing? Just wondering.

benja123 6y ago

These are probably the most highly guarded facilities in Iran. Justified or not, it is absolutely incredible that certain intelligence organizations are able to pull off these types of attacks again and again. We will probably never know how they did it, but I hope I can read about it one day.

yonixw 6y ago
While not downplaying it, It was probably around 70% "human hacking" and only 30% computer\hardware hacking.
- benja123 6y ago
  For me that makes it all the more interesting. I would assume that most of the people that work at those facilities are subject to intense security checks and surveillance. Despite that someone is able to either convince or trick some of the workers to do something that comes at a huge personal risk. Human hacking is no less interesting than software/hardware hacking
  - emayljames 6y ago
    The soft spots are always blackmail, extortion and threats. Once they have people in one of these positions, they have a lot of leverage.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  On something like this, I expect the "human hacking" to be much harder, and the "everything is broken" nature of computing to be nearly unchanged. So I expect it to be computer hacking at any place where it's possible, and human hacking only to run around theoretically unbeatable protections (like air-gaps).
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Human hacking in a police state with no diplomatic mission for cover and where nearly every foreigner is surveilled from the moment they enter makes this even more remarkable. The fact that western intelligence agencies and especially the Israelis managed to develop a network of assets in Iran is marvel of tradecraft.

88840-8855 6y ago

When this stuff happens here then we call it "Putin job" and demand sanctions. Just for fun, I suggest we say it was "Biden" and demand sanctions against the USA. :) Aaaaaaand let the downvoting begin.

dane-pgp 6y ago
Why would the US support sanctions against a country that attacked its enemy? I'm not saying that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is always a good strategy, but you seem to be advocating for "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy", which makes less sense.
- FpUser 6y ago
  >"Why would the US support sanctions against a country that attacked its enemy" Of course it would not. And you can't really blame such behavior because every country does the same. Just do not be a hypocrite and cry a river when being hacked.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    It's not exactly hypocrisy to complain when someone attacks you and not complain when your enemy gets attacked. I suppose you could say that it's hypocrisy to complain about being attacked while also happily attacking other countries (which would be relevant if the US was responsible for this attack on Iran). In general though, people and countries like to believe that they are in the right, and that there is no justification for someone attacking them, whereas if they attack someone else it's because they deserved it or it was self-defence. I don't think we should condemn all self-defence as hypocritical, but perhaps a better argument for hypocrisy in this case is the fact that the US and Israel are both nuclear powers trying to prevent Iran from becoming one. Even that is an over-simplification, though.
throw_this_one 6y ago
Downvoting because your comment is brainless lol. Did Israel say they are going to destroy Iran? Or did Iran say they are going to destroy Israel? Answer that question and then you will understand.

ffggvv 6y ago

likely israel because they can no longer trust the US president to not give away the keys to the kingdom

mhh__ 6y ago
Famous Iran lover... Joe Biden?

ajcp 6y ago

The real take-away from this is that you have a _very_ competent cyber-actor (Iran) getting pancaked at will by an _extremely_ competent cyber-actor (Israel) in what one would presume to be one of it's most, _if not most_, cybersecure locations (Natanz). Nation-states using cyber capabilities in this way, and the non-response it evokes, is reminiscent of how pre-WWI nation-states would conduct policy and international affairs with their armies. It's something I wish the general public were more cognizant of. We need to openly talk about this type of power and conflict. Otherwise we're going to have another WWI-type moment, where it takes millions of people dying before we realize that the state of the game has changed because of new technologies.

shoto_io 6y ago
There is a new cyber study from HP and a UK Uni. “We may be at far greater risk from the internet than was ever suspected,” Michail McGuire, senior lecturer of criminology, said. His new study of the nation-state cybersphere shows that we may be closer to advanced cyber conflict (cyberwar) than at any point since the inception of the internet. I thought it was far fetched, but incident like this show it’s not. https://press.hp.com/content/dam/sites/garage-press/press/press-releases/2021/web-of-profit/hp-bps-web-of-profit-report-april-2021.pdf https://press.hp.com/content/dam/sites/garage-press/press/pr...
- ajcp 6y ago
  > A cyber-treaty won’t be coming overnight: As a comparatively new area of international relations, there are fewer 'rules' and far more grey areas – for example, blurred lines between Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups and Nation States. While there is hope we will one day come to an agreement on cyberwarfare and cyberweapons, today there is very little in place that can stem the tide. And there it is on page 1! Excellent contribution, thank you so much for this.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
  "closer" as in "if you listen to the firewall log, you can hear the artillery"
deleted 6y ago

borplk 6y ago

Keep in mind that "cyber attack" can be a cover for other types of attack. It creates this convenient image of "hackers press a button and things blow up" to divert attention away from the reality. I wouldn't be so quick in believing it being a cyber attack.

slg 6y ago
Wouldn't both the perpetrator and the victim have to be in on that deception? Why would both parties go along with that?
- ehsankia 6y ago
  That's not quite what happened. First, Iran blamed it on cyberattack, then Israeli media took credit for it, because why the hell would they not? It's also not even confirmed, just assumed: > Israeli public broadcaster Kan said that it could be assumed that the incident was an Israeli cyber operation, citing the discovery in 2010 of the Stuxnet computer virus
  - slg 6y ago
    >That's not quite what happened. I wasn't saying one way or another what happened. But a physical military attack by Israel would be much more frowned on by the international community than a cyberattack. In that situation, what motivation is there for Iran to conceal that to the benefit of Israel?
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      Hmm, well I assume it is a bit shameful to get hacked on the very day it opens, especially after the whole Stuxnet kerfuffle, so they may want to underplay the damage done.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  It makes one seem mighty, and it makes the other not seem as incompetent. If the attack was 'unprecedented', or 'unexpected' or 'sophisticated' then the people responsible from the victim's team are absolved of their failures and mistakes while the other side gets to look good and mighty.

jchook 6y ago

Reminded of "What is the most sophisticated piece of software ever written?" on Quora. Buckle in. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-of-software-ever-written-1 https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-o...

crocktucker 6y ago
Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  What?! So I can get my computer infected?!
  - crocktucker 6y ago
    I was eager for some insight into sophisticated software (either deep or funny - I was open for anything); I was greeted with a prompt to enable JavaScript. I still haven't been able to clean all the irony off my monitor.
IncRnd 6y ago
Yea, that's what someone wrote on Quora, but Stuxnet isn't the most sophisticated piece of software ever written - let alone that it is not the most sophisticated exploit ever written.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Find me another program that requires knowledge more niche than nuclear refinement processes suitable for the production of weapons, and enough HUMINT to know what to target etc. Stuxnet is probably not the most sophisticated program ever, but it's probably the most information dense.
  - pooya13 6y ago

BariumBlue 6y ago

This (and the recent ish attack on the IRGC ship) is most likely the doing of Israel to prevent the JCPOA from being reestablished and from Iran getting any sanctions relief. If Iranian lawmakers believe these attacks were by the US (they possibly do believe that), they will be less willing to enter an agreement with the US, and Israel furthers it's goal of isolating it's adversary, Iran.

Udik 6y ago
Israel is clearly enjoying a great moment for inflicting damage on its arch-enemy. If Iran reacts, it's going to get the blame for attacking (because history always begins after Israel's latest offensive action) and the US will find a much hoped for excuse not to re-enter the nuclear deal. So Iran can only endure the humiliation and suck it up. So far they've shown an incredible patience.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- benja123 6y ago
  I am going to have to disagree. Iran recently attacked an Israeli ship, but more importantly it continues to arm terrorist groups (note I am Israeli, so I am probably not objective here, but yes I believe Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups. Some of you may think differently on that. We can agree to disagree) that are against Israel’s existence. Those groups are constantly either attacking or trying to attack Israel. Now you can argue Israel is also attacking those groups and you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s almost impossible to figure out who started each round. We only ever hear a very small part of the story. It is a circle of violence that will hopefully one day end.
  - Udik 6y ago
    > terrorist groups [...] that are against Israel’s existence I think this is an oversimplification useful to justify Israeli aggressiveness. It's also part of the self-deluded statements of those groups. If Israel was interested in peace and justice, it could act like the adult in the room and try to heal the wounds that are at the root of the violence. Let's not forget that Israel is practically an apartheid state (but conveniently outside its fuzzy borders, so it can keep pretending it's not) and that it's been steadily appropriating more land from Palestinians since it's been in existence. If Israel were interested in peace and justice. My take is that it's not interested, because that would put an end to its expansion and unchecked power in the region.

hogFeast 6y ago

It is odd... Iran has lots of energy resources, is a huge energy exporter, and has a ton of heavy polluting industry...but they are also investing heavily in nuclear energy? Odd.

nitrogen 6y ago
Western oil companies have invested heavily in solar power. It's a hedge against peak oil and/or global CO2 restrictions.
vbezhenar 6y ago
Nuclear energy is a clear path to eco-friendly future. Everyone is interested with that, nobody wants to burn oil even if you have plenty of that oil. I live in Kazakhstan, we have plenty of oil, gas and coal, but we want to build nuclear plants, we are experimenting with wind and solar generators, nobody likes to breath dirty air.
- hogFeast 6y ago
  Sarcasm. Iran are, amazingly for such a small economy, a massive polluter and they would rather drop dead then stop selling oil (fighter jets don't pay for themselves, the military owns most of their economy). My point is: the nuclear industry exists to make weapons. That is it. It is baffling that other nations pretend otherwise (for example, the EU seems quite happy to pretend that Iran's massive interest in nuclear technology is for civilian purposes...unf, countries in the EU have a long record of supplying countries in the region with "civilian" technology that was later used to murder people).
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    That might be true for Iran. But I don't see it as an issue, because obviously Iran wants to do so to protect them from foreign invasion, just like North Korea managed to get in position where nobody would want to risk invading them. It's not an ideal situation where one should get deadliest weapon ever to bring peace to the country, but at least it seems to work.

mjfl 6y ago

How hard is it to enrich uranium, really? It was done previously with 1940s technology. No computers required really.

parsimo2010 6y ago
Pretty hard. But the enrichment isn’t even the hardest part, just tedious. Iran has had the knowledge and equipment for several years. But it takes time to produce enough material to be useful, and they keep getting sabotaged. Not just the equipment, but top leaders and scientists get killed from time to time. Keep in mind that the Manhattan Project employed over 100,000 people and cost a couple billion dollars, which would be tens of billions of dollars after inflation. Iran has been under sanctions of varying strictness for a few decades. That amount of people and money isn’t trivial to them like it is to the USA in 1940, which was a rising superpower.
- kps 6y ago
  And the Manhattan Project only managed to enrich enough uranium for one bomb.
  - gruez 6y ago
    But they had no trouble making two bombs to drop on japan?
    - makomk 6y ago
      The other bomb dropped on Japan used plutonium, as did the Trinity nuclear test. (Yes, the US had so little uranium that the bomb design using it wasn't even tested before it was used against Japan.)
  - thatcat 6y ago
    I'm pretty certain they made way more than one, but even if not - that was a really inefficient design. Only a few percent of the input material actually achieved fission.

secfirstmd 6y ago

As ever Israel makes a strong Operational measure but a poor Strategic one. What exactly is the end game that it thinks is going to happen? There is zero scenario in which Iran is going to fully stop trying to build a nuke in the basement. The JPCOA is the only show in town.

Kalium 6y ago
You're absolutely right. The JCPOA is the only show in town. What do you think Israel's good Strategic measure would be?
- stunt 6y ago
  Make sure agreements and cooperation with the west is successful and help the vast majority of the public in Iran realize that working with the west is in their interest. Over time it will help the left parties in Iran to gain more power and influence than the conservative and anti-west figures. Once you have the public support, slowly and surely push them to have peace with Israel. They used to be allies together. So it shouldn't be impossible. But, we just did the opposite. The anti-west parties now have an easy story to tell: "We tried, they lied, we shouldn't work with them.". We added sanctions too. An economy under sanction runs by military and gives more power to the military, because only they have the tools to interact with the black market and bypass sanctions. Not the liberal, open-minded Businessman which is more likely to support more interactions with the world.
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    Exactly. There are too many missed opportunities for bringing in Iran from the fold to mention.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

throwaway4good 6y ago

I thought Biden wanted to re-enter the JCPOA agreement with Iran? Surely the Israelis wouldn't do something like this without having coordinated with the US if not directly ordered by the US ...

monocasa 6y ago
The Isrealis have always embraced being a bit of a loose cannon geopolitically. It's smart; it let's them punch oabove their weight if they're careful about it (which they normally are). My bet is they did this with the US's knowledge, but not involvement or approval. Israel doesn't want Iran going into the JCPOA without their nuclear program being set back as far as possible to square one. The US knows that it's an uphill battle to get the Iranians at the table at all, and would defer dismantling of their nuclear program to the outcome of the negotiations.

atlgator 6y ago

Stuxnet 2.0

snurfer 6y ago
Nice. So JavaScript/Ajax frameworks?
- atlgator 6y ago
  MVC too
brap 6y ago
Now with GraphQL
- disk0 6y ago
  stuxnext.js

pooya13 6y ago

> Iran, which insists it does not want nuclear weapons The bias in BBC phrasing still amazes me. Using “Iran insists it does not want nuclear weapons”, which is technically a true statement, instead of the more accurate one “There is no evidence that Iran seeks nuclear weapons”, which acknowledges the investigation and authority of the international atomic agency.

cochne 6y ago

I think the title is misleading. I do not see anything in the article confirming it was a cyber attack. Only media organizations claiming that it could be.

mikeiz404 6y ago
I agree. Maybe a prefix of “claimed” or “alleged” or “assumed” would help. These are the strongest claims I found backing it in the article: “Israeli media suggest the incident was a result of an Israeli cyber attack.” “A nuclear facility in Iran was hit by a "terrorist act" a day after it unveiled new advanced uranium centrifuges, a top nuclear official says.” “Later state TV read out a statement by AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi, in which he described the incident as "sabotage" and "nuclear terrorism".” “Ron Ben-Yishai, a defence analyst at the Ynet news website, said that with Iran progressing towards nuclear weapons capability it was "reasonable to assume that the problem... might not have been caused by an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on removing sanctions".” And background given that 1) a cyber attack, stuxnet, has happened here in the past and 2) recent actions by Iran incentives an action like this occurring again.

bjourne 6y ago

Israel has been targeting Iranian civil infrastructure and is also believed to be behind numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists. Scientists are usually deemed to be civilians. Since Israel has already attacked civilian targets and killed civilians, it would seem to me that by the laws of tit for that, Iran has the right to retaliate against Israeli civilians. In fact, Iran's allies such as Syria and Hezbollah should also have the same right. Israel's use of terrorism against what it considers its enemies is afaik unprecedented. As is the fact that the rest of the world lets Israel get away with it without so much as a peep.

pepperonipizza 6y ago
Are they still considered civilians when they work for a military program that threatens Israel existence? My grandfather was a scientist working for the army, he had a salary paid by the military and was part of it.
- bjourne 6y ago
  Yes, by the rules of war they are civilians. Let's assume that they were not and that the facility was a legitimate military target. Then it stands to reason that every Israeli person who helped stage this attack is also a legitimate military target. Every engineer who touched the malware code, every engineer who touched code for the tools to create the malware code, every project manager to any such engineer, every university professor who taught these engineers to create the malware code, every investor who profited from the military's procurement of the malware code the engineers wrote, etc. Add to the fact that the assassination of Iranian scientists is at least partially about deterrence - attempting to scare away nuclear scientists - and you have a strong argument in favor of treating Israel's cybersecurity industry as fair game for Iranian assassinations. It becomes very hard to draw a hard and fast line between civilian and combatant.
throw_this_one 6y ago
Did Israel say they are going to destroy the country of Iran? Or did Iran say they are going to destroy Israel? Answer that question and then you will understand why your comment is essentially idiotic.

bjourne 6y ago

Israel is a heavily militarized society with a strong military-industrial complex. Relatively speaking, it is more powerful than the American military-industrial complex. Thus what you get is policy that favors the weapons industry and those in the military community but which is not beneficial to Israel as a whole. The Palestinians aren't enough of a punching bag so Iran needs to be painted as the great Satan to sell more military equipment.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
howmayiannoyyou 6y ago
Israel -- politically divided, pluralistic society, democratic government & leader in exporting high-tech, pharma & healthcare advancements. Iran -- repressive, despotic regime & leader in exporting terrorism.
- babesh 6y ago
  You conveniently failed to mention the Gaza Strip and the occupied territories where the people have no vote and no rights. So it is a democracy for some and a despotic regime for others. Frankly both these states are acting out of self interest. Leave morality out of it. It’s probably mostly true for both peoples as well.
  - flyinglizard 6y ago
    Gazans can, in fact, vote. They voted in Hamas who took away their right to vote but back when Israel disengaged and left them to their own devices, Gazans could indeed vote.
    - babesh 6y ago
      Can they vote for seats in Israel’s government? My understanding is not.

kowlo 6y ago

Looks like this is descending quicker than usual on the HN front-page [1], anyone know why? [1] https://ibb.co/0hjnyq7 https://ibb.co/0hjnyq7

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
More comments than upvotes for the article itself. That usually indicates a flame war. And the comments have sometimes tended that direction...

pknerd 6y ago

A bit off topic, is there any hollywood movie on stuxnet incident?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

1cvmask 6y ago

The Wikileaks and Snowden revelations showed that the NSA had tools to point the hacking at others like a false flag operation. With that knowledge in mind how can we ever conclusively blame anyone for a hacking attack as the proverbial smoking gun can even be placed in the victims hand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7

vkou 6y ago

An obvious question that comes up is: "When will these cyber attacks be properly considered what they are - an act of war?" I frequently hear this question receiving top billing when some commercial entity here is the target of one.

pygar 6y ago

If Iran got close to creating a Nuke wouldn't the US just bomb the site? Iran must surely know that it will not get away with building nukes either. So what are they doing? Iran's bark is larger then it's bite. I think it just wants to use its nuclear activities as a bargaining chip for sanction relief. So why should the US do anything at all regarding Iran? It can destroy those sites easily enough if it needs to. Why doesn't it just refuse to negotiate and keep Iran poor? Iran's military threat are, relatively, a mild annoyance, and calling their bluff and immediately escalating as trump did when he killed Soleimani seems to temper them as any escalation hurts them a lot more then it does the US. I think when we treat Iran as a real threat, as we did with NK, it just gives them more legitimacy then they deserve.

Paddywack 6y ago
> It can destroy those sites easily enough if it needs to. Is it as simple as that? (1) There is a continuum from dirty bombs to full Nukes that makes it a bit more messy. (2) Are Nukes not more "hideable" than this? For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed?
- baybal2 6y ago
  > For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed? Because of a country up north.
  - yongjik 6y ago
    > > For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed? > Because of a country up north. ...and another country down south as well. There are fifty million citizens of a country officially allied with America who would appreciate not having a nuclear war next door, thank you very much.
- pygar 6y ago
  The size of the sites they need to make the nukes are not small. It's more a matter of Intellegence knowing whats going on there. The issue with NK, to my understading, is that any action there would lead to SK ( A densely populated country) being attacked with a lot regular missiles that would be hard to prevent.

granshaw 6y ago

Just a power outage? Sounds like just a one time issue that won’t have any material impact on their nuclear readiness? Wished the article elaborated on the actual outcome of the attack

poisonarena 6y ago

I see in the comments here that most of the talk has devolved to israel/palestinian conflicts or Israel/Iran conflicts, mostly with a lot of bad energy. I am Israeli and last winter I spent 3 months living in Istabul doing coke/drinking/clubbing with a bunch of Iranian guys who left Tehran to make money and find opportunities in Istanbul. Turkey is one of the few countries they can go to easily. They all knew I was Israeli and they never cared, I met several groups of Iranians in my time spent there and they all had several things in common. They loved to party, they didn't care about Israel at all, and wanted to escape the theocratic clerics that enforced all the rules on them. There is very much a huge portion of young Iranians that have big secret parties and participate in music and things the government does not allow. And I dont think the current regime can keep this up forever. Sometimes I get angry at social media, because everywhere I travel to now compared to 15 years ago seems like it is becoming the same, like all the cultures are just melting together into some kind of Instagram/narcissist thing, but in this case, in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I believe it is pulling the young into some kind of societal/cultural reform. Because everyone really just wants to have a good time.

mikewarot 6y ago

Any computer, anywhere, can be hacked. As long as that remains true, nothing and nobody is safe. The root cause of this insecurity is a bad trust model. There are perverse incentives keeping people from using a different trust model. The US Military Industrial Complex developed systems that are provable secure, but decided they didn't need to bother. Perhaps it's time to reconsider?

Vaderv 6y ago

Israeli committed an act of Terrorism, Pure and Simple.