It is my belief that this third world war has already begun, at least in part in the cyber regions of the world.
Iran was the initial target of this very powerful malware, and now it is targeting China. Could Russia be next?
If this is the case, and the initial phases of this 3 world war have indeed begun, then the counter cyber attacks by these states is sure to be around the corner.
Iran perhaps will not be such a great a threat as perhaps China and Russia will.
If the Chinese, or Russians counter with a powerful worm of their own, then it is perhaps the precursor to an all out war.
What better way than to weaken your enemy, than by shutting down there cyber security infrastructure.
The follow two articles relate to this information. Remain vigilant and prayerful at all times.
Iran is bent on avenging cyber attack, raising military tensions
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
October 1, 2010, 6:41 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://debka.com/article/9058/
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
October 1, 2010, 6:41 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://debka.com/article/9058/
Tehran is bent on military action to settle scores with Israel and the United States whom it suspects of planting the malignant Stuxnet cyber worm in the computer systems of its nuclear, military and strategic infrastructure, debkafile's military and US sources report. The timeline of this attack revolves around the state visit to Lebanon President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has scheduled for Oct. 13-14, during which he will tour the Israeli border. Preying heavily on Iran too are the personal sanctions the United States has just imposed on its top military brass and ministers.
All this will no doubt come up in Syrian President Bashar Assad's talks with Iranian leaders during his visit to Tehran Saturday, Oct. 2.
In its latest issue, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported Friday, Oct. 1 that when Assad and Ahmadinejad last met in Damascus on Sept. 18, three days after the malworm surfaced, the Iranian president warned that his country wouldf retaliate for the cyber attack by military means. Its allies, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas were advised to prepare for Israel taking the opportunity to attack them.
A few days later, Syrian sources leaked word that during that first encounter, Assad had urged Ahmadinejad to postpone his trip to Lebanon. They did not explain why.
However, Friday, Oct. 1, Syrian and Lebanese sources disclosed that Israel's northern border units had been placed on an elevated level of preparedness. The IDF spokesman did not deny the report, only pointing out that Israeli units on the borders with Lebanon and Syria had been on a high alert for some time and were keeping close watch on developments.
Aware of the incendiary tensions building up in its vicinity, Damascus is clearly taking pains to maintain a safe distance from any impending military conflagrations involving Iran, the United States and Israel.
Washington got involved when Wednesday, Sept. 29, President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on eight top Iranian officials, accusing them of serious human rights abuses, including the killing, torture, beating and rape of Iranian citizens since the country's disputed 2009 presidential election.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly noted that this was the first timeWashington had singled out top-flight Iranian military and security personages for personal penalties and imposed them without reference to Iran's nuclear program.
Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was additionally branded a criminal who should stand trial for murder. Also covered by this charges wereHeydar Moslehi, Minister of Intelligence, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, Interior Minister in charge of Iranian security and intelligence services, and Gen. Hossein Taeb, Deputy IRGC commander and head of the corps intelligence.
Obama only signed the sanctions order this week, whereas the eight officials' crimes occurred more than a year ago in the wake of their crackdown on political opponents who charged the regime with falsifying the election. It would seem therefore that the US president acted with the intention of further dividing Iran's leaders and adding to the perplexity and demoralization besetting them over their powerlessness to bring the destructive cyber worm under control.
The severity of the personal charges Washington brought against these Iranian powerhouses and their timing were certainly not lost on interested parties in the region. debkafile's Iranian sources do not believe the Islamic regime can afford to let Washington's blunt assault on it’s the mainstays of its power go unchallenged.
The New York Times, followed by several other Western media and computer security specialists, this week reported a clue they believed they had found pointing to Israel as the source of the cyber attack on Iran: The word "myrtus" -Latin for the myrtle tree was found embedded in the Staxnet code. They pointed out that the Hebrew for myrtle, Hadas, resembles Hadassah, the birth name of the Jewish Queen Esther of ancient Persia who is depicted in the Book of Esther as persuading the king to pre-empt an attack on the Jewish population.
debkafile has an alternative interpretation: Branches of Hadas or myrtle are one of the Four Species featuring in Jewish ritual for Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, which occurred this year on Sept 22-29.
===================================================================
China
Updated Friday, October 1, 2010 9:09 pm TWN, AFP
Stuxnet 'cyber superweapon' infects millions of PCs in China
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2010/10/01/274530/Stuxnet-cyber.htm
All this will no doubt come up in Syrian President Bashar Assad's talks with Iranian leaders during his visit to Tehran Saturday, Oct. 2.
In its latest issue, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported Friday, Oct. 1 that when Assad and Ahmadinejad last met in Damascus on Sept. 18, three days after the malworm surfaced, the Iranian president warned that his country wouldf retaliate for the cyber attack by military means. Its allies, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas were advised to prepare for Israel taking the opportunity to attack them.
A few days later, Syrian sources leaked word that during that first encounter, Assad had urged Ahmadinejad to postpone his trip to Lebanon. They did not explain why.
However, Friday, Oct. 1, Syrian and Lebanese sources disclosed that Israel's northern border units had been placed on an elevated level of preparedness. The IDF spokesman did not deny the report, only pointing out that Israeli units on the borders with Lebanon and Syria had been on a high alert for some time and were keeping close watch on developments.
Aware of the incendiary tensions building up in its vicinity, Damascus is clearly taking pains to maintain a safe distance from any impending military conflagrations involving Iran, the United States and Israel.
Washington got involved when Wednesday, Sept. 29, President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on eight top Iranian officials, accusing them of serious human rights abuses, including the killing, torture, beating and rape of Iranian citizens since the country's disputed 2009 presidential election.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly noted that this was the first timeWashington had singled out top-flight Iranian military and security personages for personal penalties and imposed them without reference to Iran's nuclear program.
Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was additionally branded a criminal who should stand trial for murder. Also covered by this charges wereHeydar Moslehi, Minister of Intelligence, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, Interior Minister in charge of Iranian security and intelligence services, and Gen. Hossein Taeb, Deputy IRGC commander and head of the corps intelligence.
Obama only signed the sanctions order this week, whereas the eight officials' crimes occurred more than a year ago in the wake of their crackdown on political opponents who charged the regime with falsifying the election. It would seem therefore that the US president acted with the intention of further dividing Iran's leaders and adding to the perplexity and demoralization besetting them over their powerlessness to bring the destructive cyber worm under control.
The severity of the personal charges Washington brought against these Iranian powerhouses and their timing were certainly not lost on interested parties in the region. debkafile's Iranian sources do not believe the Islamic regime can afford to let Washington's blunt assault on it’s the mainstays of its power go unchallenged.
The New York Times, followed by several other Western media and computer security specialists, this week reported a clue they believed they had found pointing to Israel as the source of the cyber attack on Iran: The word "myrtus" -Latin for the myrtle tree was found embedded in the Staxnet code. They pointed out that the Hebrew for myrtle, Hadas, resembles Hadassah, the birth name of the Jewish Queen Esther of ancient Persia who is depicted in the Book of Esther as persuading the king to pre-empt an attack on the Jewish population.
debkafile has an alternative interpretation: Branches of Hadas or myrtle are one of the Four Species featuring in Jewish ritual for Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, which occurred this year on Sept 22-29.
===================================================================
China
Updated Friday, October 1, 2010 9:09 pm TWN, AFP
Stuxnet 'cyber superweapon' infects millions of PCs in China
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2010/10/01/274530/Stuxnet-cyber.htm
BEIJING -- mputer virus dubbed the world's “first cyber superweapon” by experts and which may have been designed to attack Iran's nuclear facilities has found a new target — China.
The Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc in China, infecting millions of computers around the country, state media reported this week.
Stuxnet is feared by experts around the globe as it can break into computers that control machinery at the heart of industry, allowing an attacker to assume control of critical systems like pumps, motors, alarms and valves.
It could, technically, make factory boilers explode, destroy gas pipelines or even cause a nuclear plant to malfunction.
The virus targets control systems made by German industrial giant Siemens commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities.
“This malware is specially designed to sabotage plants and damage industrial systems, instead of stealing personal data,” an engineer surnamed Wang at antivirus service provider Rising International Software told the Global Times.
“Once Stuxnet successfully penetrates factory computers in China, those industries may collapse, which would damage China's national security,” he added.
Another unnamed expert at Rising International said the attacks had so far infected more than six million individual accounts and nearly 1,000 corporate accounts around the country, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The Stuxnet computer worm — a piece of malicious software (malware) which copies itself and sends itself on to other computers in a network — was first publicly identified in June.
It was found lurking on Siemens systems in India, Indonesia, Pakistan and elsewhere, but the heaviest infiltration appears to be in Iran, according to software security researchers.
A Beijing-based spokesman for Siemens declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Thursday.
Yu Xiaoqiu, an analyst with the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Centre, downplayed the malware threat.
“So far we don't see any severe damage done by the virus,” Yu was quoted by the Global Times as saying.
“New viruses are common nowadays. Both personal Internet surfers and Chinese pillar companies don't need to worry about it at all. They should be alert but not too afraid of it.”
A top U.S. cybersecurity official said last week that the country was analysing the computer worm but did not know who was behind it or its purpose.
“One of our hardest jobs is attribution and intent,” Sean McGurk, director of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), told reporters in Washington.
“It's very difficult to say 'This is what it was targeted to do,'” he said of Stuxnet, which some computer security experts have said may be intended to sabotage a nuclear facility in Iran.
A cyber superweapon is a term used by experts to describe a piece of malware designed specifically to hit computer networks that run industrial plants.
“The Stuxnet worm is a wake-up call to governments around the world,” Derek Reveron, a cyber expert at the US Naval War School, was quoted as saying Thursday by the South China Morning Post.
“It is the first known worm to target industrial control systems.”
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