Posted on 06/01/2012 2:56:01 AM PDT by raybbr
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 In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that.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.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Next, we will be reading about hussein’s bravery about taking on the role of target by all terrorist groups since it is he, and he alone, who is responsible for taking out all the bad guys.
Interesting how hussein is only referred to by title what, once in the article. Then it is simply "Mr."
One other thing. These meetings, if they took place, were "secret" meetings. So presumably no-one is allowed to talk about them. Only the anointed hussein cohort in crime can "leak" their version of events. If anyone else talks about them, off to prison, do not pass go, do not get your day in court. (National Security don't you know!) So all we have is some hussein flunky's version of events. I seriously doubt it went down the way they say it did.
from the looong ny times article:
Mr. Obama, according to participants in the many Situation Room meetings on Olympic Games, was acutely aware that with every attack he was pushing the United States into new territory, much as his predecessors had with the first use of atomic weapons in the 1940s, of intercontinental missiles in the 1950s and of drones in the past decade. He repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons — even under the most careful and limited circumstances — could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks.
Automatic dismissal.
Is it just me or does it seem a real stretch to equate hacking an IT system with all of the work that went into developing ICBMs or atomic weapons?
Someone seems a little full of himself.
Is it just me or does it seem a real stretch to equate hacking an IT system with all of the work that went into developing ICBMs or atomic weapons?
Someone seems a little full of himself.
To paraphrase Eli Wallach in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,”: If you’re going to talk, talk; if you’re going to hack, hack!
I don’t think it was on purpose, but the repeating of this particular post was fine with me. Admitting this is FUBAR.
this is a serious breach of basically everything I know about security
And then some, particularly so as it concerns Iran at this time. This is mind-bogglingly self-serving at the price of national security.
Next story:
“Obama first president to memorize nuclear codes, says it’s easy for him because they’re 888777666555444.”
When you talk about The 0, those are actually the two most operative words that can be imagined.
...and if you think that this was a crass move, just wait until the campaign/WH starts to get really desperate.
JMHO, if The 0's private polls don't start going up almost exponentially by the end of July, there won't be ANY limits on the stuff that gets exposed or the measures that will be used against his opponents. Right down to thee and me.
This Chicago Clown Posse is just liable to try to make Apres moi le deluge into real life, if they don't get what they want.
Realistically where would Iran think Stuxnet came from?
US and Israel?
or
China and Venezuela?
>>”where would Iran think Stuxnet came from?”
Better to keep them thinking than to let them, their people, and the word know.
It is and should have remained a secret program.
>>”where would Iran think Stuxnet came from?”
Better to keep them thinking than to let them, their people, and the world know.
It is and should have remained a secret program.
And they manage to blame Israel for something here also:
Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. “It’s got to be the Israelis,” he said. “They went too far.”
Plus details and confirmation of specifics of implementation and how Stuxnet was escaped from an Iranian engineer’s computer.
Way too many loose lips and, of course, the NYT will print it - especially in an article to tout our ballsy CIC.
I think Congress should investigate the leaks and heads should roll.
The Barry/Axelrod axis has decided to enlist the ever willing NYSlimes in a series of stories designed to show that Barry is some kind of tough hombre. Earlier this week, it was "Barry - Master of Drones." Now this. And of course, as you note, cyber warrior Barry gets all the credit.
If this was 1944, and Obama was in the White House, he would be telling people how he’s getting tough with Germany by scheduling the invasion of Normandy for next week.
Stuxnet had to at least start development under Bush. You can’t write code like that on the fly.
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