The cyber war that exists isn’t just between the United States and Iran. In fact, most of the action is heating up in the Middle East. A newer comparable version of Stuxnet, called Flame, has ravaged countries such as Syria and Saudi Arabia as well. One of the oil giants in Saudi Arabia, called Aramco, was victim to cyber attacks by a group called The Cutting Sword of Justice. Right now no country been made in affiliation with this hacker group, but the cyber attack ended up with over 30,000 computers ruined and unimaginable amounts of data wiped from database servers. After around a week of repairs, the company was finally back online, but the damage that had already been done was irreversible.

Short article talking about the attack: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/saudi-aramco-cyber-attacks-a-wake-up-call-says/

Even representatives of countries are coming out and publicly declaring intentions with cyber security. At the beginning of last year Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, gave a speech to a public news agency stating to his people, “you are the cyber-war agents and such a war requires Amman-like insight and Malik Ashtar-like resistance. Get yourself ready for such war wholeheartedly.” 

The United States has not so much as publicly let their intentions known, but it’s obvious that if the US does want to keep up with this constantly changing battlefield then steps must be taken. There has been speculation as far as the extent of the US administrations policy of cyber war with other countries (shown in link below), but no official statements have been given as of yet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/07/leaked-documents-hint-at-obamas-emerging-cyberwar-doctrine/

Just recently a casino on the Las Vegas strip was attacked by suspected Iranian hackers. The attack was in response to the owner of the companies remark about how the United States should fire atomic weapons at Iran. A link with a short article and video about the comment and repercussions is below:

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/10/adelson-nuclear-negotiate

The purpose of this attack was not to steal funds or end in some sort of financial gain. The whole point was to cause as much destruction as possible, and it definitely succeed in doing so. The attack happened in the early morning and caused the casino to completely shut down. Computers were crashing, e-mails were re-directed, and even phone calls were having trouble getting through. This attack resulted in the defacing of the website as well as the theft of customers social security numbers and drivers license information. On top of this almost all information stored in the Sands Casino hard drives were completely wiped. In an effort to save what they could, network cables were ripped out of their sockets and any other form of information relaying was shut down.

Other nations infiltrating companies computer systems and information is actually more common than one would think. However in this case, there was no sneaking about in the shadows. It was an obvious retaliation for a public statement, showing that cyber warfare is becoming an increasingly more intense reality.

The war between the United States and Iran has been waging on for a while. It is hard to tell exactly when this engagement started, but we can roughly guess that  around the time the Stuxnet virus was released was the start of the trading of blows. For those who are unfamiliar with the Stuxnet virus, it was first discovered in 2010. To start off this virus was very unique in several ways, first was the fact that it is not like your run-of-the-mill computer virus, it specifically was meant to be transferred among industrial systems. Secondly the virus was unlike others in the fact that its release was obviously targeted at the Iranian nuclear program. Stuxnet’s main purpose was infiltrate the robotics of the industry machines and cause small changes to the frequency of the centrifuge which was used to separate two elements: uranium-235 and uranium-238. The virus’ effect was very minimal, but in a highly dangerous facility this effect caused a lot of chaos. There were no casualties as result of the virus, but the main target was really time and finances.

No claims have been made to this virus yet, but there have been some hints as to who laid the foundation for Stuxnet. Kaspersky, a widely used anti-virus/malware software company, claims that the attack could have only been done with national resources and support. Also Gary Saymoore, the White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, gives us the biggest hint saying that he was glad the Stuxnet virus had been introduced to the Iranian nuclear operations.

Here is a short video explaining a deeper background for Stuxnet and Gary Saymoore commenting on the virus:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/security/video-cracking-the-code-defending-against-the-superweapons-of-the-21st-century-cyberwar/9456/

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