
Could Iran Wage A Cyberwar On The U.S.? - marklabedz
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/26/151400805/could-iran-wage-a-cyberwar-on-the-u-s
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bediger4000
Heard this during my morning drive. My impressions from hearing the
"consultants" speak is that they're just trying to drum up some business via
fear-mongering. My spider-sense also tingles a little, which makes me think
this is part of some infernal "run-up" to a war with Iran.

Empirically, I just don't buy it. Sure, Iran is a menace, but they have spent
the last 50 years (yes, under the Shah as well) trying to stamp out the kind
of free-form anarchism that makes the best hackers. I mean, they've got the
idea of doing a heavily-snooped and censored "halal internet" for their own
purposes. That sort of censorship is just not conducive to producing native
black-hat hackers.

Why, just the other day, there was an HN story about some Iranian who found a
vuln in all the major Iranian bank's software. He notified them, got ignored,
demonstrated the vuln with 30,000 back accounts, got ignored, then dumped
_all_ the bank's account info. Then left the country. Does this sound like a
culture that can produce "CyberWarriors"? It does not to me.

And before anyone brings it up, yes, Red China has a huge hacker/honker
population. They also have a population of 1.3 billion. They have a huge
population of X, for any value of X. Iran has a population of 73 million
that's roundoff error in China's population. Despite the Sleeping Dragon of
censorship in China, the vast population ensures plenty of every type of
person. I doubt that's true for Iran.

