Washington – NY Times: Obama Secretly Ordered Cyber Attacks On Iran’

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    Natanz nuclear facility (Photo: AP)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.

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    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 In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that.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.

    Breakthrough, Aided by Israel

    It took months for the beacons to do their work and report home, complete with maps of the electronic directories of the controllers and what amounted to blueprints of how they were connected to the centrifuges deep underground.

    Then the N.S.A. and a secret Israeli unit respected by American intelligence officials for its cyberskills set to work developing the enormously complex computer worm that would become the attacker from within.

    The unusually tight collaboration with Israel was driven by two imperatives. Israel’s Unit 8200, a part of its military, had technical expertise that rivaled the N.S.A.’s, and the Israelis had deep intelligence about operations at Natanz that would be vital to making the cyberattack a success. But American officials had another interest, to dissuade the Israelis from carrying out their own pre-emptive strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities. To do that, the Israelis would have to be convinced that the new line of attack was working. The only way to convince them, several officials said in interviews, was to have them deeply involved in every aspect of the program.

    Soon the two countries had developed a complex worm that the Americans called “the bug.”

    Read full article at NY Times


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    18 Comments
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    11 years ago

    Why would the NYT publicize this information? This could compromise our national security.

    Oyvey
    Oyvey
    11 years ago

    The publication of this type of information, if not technically treason, is treasonous in character.
    It would do Israel and the U.S. governments well if they were to do something like this to the NY Times.

    ChachoMoe
    ChachoMoe
    11 years ago

    Great article, and interesting to note, although the Head Lines.. the Olympic Game cyberwar was implemented by Bush, and he was the one that urged Obama to continue that policy.

    #1 Anon – Hmm I guess Iran would never have known where Flame/Stuxnet came from w/o the NYT…

    marcia
    marcia
    11 years ago

    Israel, US, Iran all have the capabilities to design a “worm”, it is quite another thing to decode it! And still yet another thing to be able to contain and control the cyberweapon that you build.

    zelmo
    zelmo
    11 years ago

    This information is being put out as part of the election campaign for Mr. Obama. There are some new details revealed in this article that have not been disclosed before and were confidential. All interviews of participants were approved by the White House.
    The current administration is doing several things:
    Trying to show us that they got Israel’s back by this cooperation but this coop was also to help the US spy on the ways Israel’s Unit 8200 works.
    Pointing the finger at Israel as a participating partner in these attacks on Iran – confirmation that Israel did indeed attack Iran means that Iran can use this confirmation against Israel in other forums that until now could not help Iran punish Israel.
    Show Iran that the US can control Israel – prior to the negotiations with the US over its nuclear program.
    The administration did this to make Obama look strong in the eyes of the American people. I think, at best, it just shows once again that this administration interests are not alligned with Israel.

    joek212
    joek212
    11 years ago

    The NYT printed this story regardless if its classified or not because they work for Obama and the Democrats and they want it to seem as if Obama is tough of terror and Iran wen in fact he’s a pacifist

    The_Truth
    Noble Member
    The_Truth
    11 years ago

    There has already been found a much more complex targeted virus, 20 times the size of Stuxnet, called Flame. This has to have been state sponsored – probably the same team that created Stuxnet.
    I have no problem giving all this info to Iran – let them know their system has been infiltrated with very little they can do to stop it!

    11 years ago

    This trash NYT is probably lying. It is far far left and wants obamanation to be re-elected and came up with an idea this would help. I personal don’t think the movie star president is that smart to think of it.

    Aryeh
    Aryeh
    11 years ago

    Since the virus was discovered, nobody had any doubts as to it’s origin. Not Iran, not Russia, and certainly not Israel or the US. This is very old news.