Obama Ordered Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

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.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

Notes

  1. rodriguezcapitaledutainment reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  2. sallydoodle reblogged this from journo-geekery and added:
    via AgileBits.
  3. cursedluck reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  4. micahsingleton reblogged this from infoneer-pulse and added:
    Like any nerd would if he/she had the power, The President decided to hack first and ask questions later.
  5. extracrispy reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  6. kylelibra reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  7. not-yet-decided reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  8. dakreeeets reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  9. cuppycakerbaker reblogged this from infoneer-pulse and added:
    Shame.
  10. thepeopleofd reblogged this from infoneer-pulse and added:
    Ah they’ve finally come out and said it. There’s no doubt that the latest cyberweapon discovered last week (FLAME) is...
  11. phofilmfan reblogged this from tinfoilandtea
  12. tinfoilandtea reblogged this from questionall
  13. questionall reblogged this from journo-geekery
  14. journo-geekery reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  15. stumblrfumblr reblogged this from infoneer-pulse and added:
    Finally, we know where, how and why Stuxnet originated!
  16. This was featured in #Tech
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