
U.S. Carried Out Cyberattacks on Iran - jasonhansel
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/us/politics/us-iran-cyber-attacks.html
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Rebelgecko
If you have the ability to hack things like a missile control system, it seems
almost wasteful to do it when there isn't an immediate concern. It's just a
less friendly pen test: now Iran knows which systems they need to do a better
job securing (or a subset of those systems)

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sschueller
Why is it OK when we do it but when "they" do it it's an act of war?

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TaylorAlexander
Everything we do is okay. At least according to our state department and most
of our news outlets. We can’t do anything wrong. It’s the enemies that are
terrible. The US stands for freedom.

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prsecurity
_according to people briefed on the operation._

The article smells of Soviet propaganda machine by claiming to conduct a
successful offensive yet providing no way of verifying even the very fact it
happened.

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Fried_Nietzsche
It could just be me, but I always found US cyber hacks to be much more
menacing. Iranian, North-Korean, Chinese and Russian hacks give off the
aesthetic of pseudo-gangsters or general bullies.

Russia: "we hacked their social network and created provocative memes"

China: "we used our military cyber intelligence team to steel Google's source
code"

North-Korea: "we hacked Sony because they created a film that made fun of us"

While the US hacks always get under your skin.

US: "We delivered a worm that slowly shut down your nuclear reactor over the
span of several days and you didn't even notice"

US: "we literally hacked into your missile system"

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whatshisface
> _An additional breach, according to one person briefed on the operations,
> targeted other computer systems that control Iranian missile launches.

Determining the effectiveness of a cyberattack on the missile launch system is
particularly difficult. Its effectiveness could be judged only if Iran tried
to fire a missile and the launch failed._

Okay, that doesn't make any sense. If an Iranian IT guy reads the NY times,
wouldn't he just go reinstall Windows on the missile launch computers?

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ganoushoreilly
These systems aren't just windows systems, you're talking guidance systems /
platforms often times controlled by SCADA platforms. While windows is a
component, the real _effective_ hacking as with stuxnet was modifying low
level code to create values that appear in line, but in fact were false
creating an improper outcome. If the US hacked iran, it wasn't a hackers style
animation, it was something low level designed to impact things beyond
_windows_. I wouldn't put it past them to even use media to imply they had
simply to break down their trust in their systems. It's effective in a post
Stuxnet world, where they know first hand it's possible.

It's also very hard for anyone to yell about retaliation when it did not cause
deaths (that we know about) and it serves as a deterrent. These stories are
going to only continue to be more and more common.

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doesnotexist
It seems like a counter productive strategy to advertise this kind of attack.
Though it may benefit humanity by influencing politics domestically, letting
the war hawks feel like something was done to quell the beating of the war
drum.

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fallingfrog
I can only imagine how Iranians feel right now. Their government signed a
deal; they abided by the deal; and now the most powerful country in the world
is crushing their economy and threatening war for no reason evident to them.
They’re probably begging their politicians to develop nukes ASAP. And making
plans to flee the country. I mean, imagine what it’s like, packing your bags,
deciding what to take and what to leave. Imagine how that makes you feel about
the United States.

War with Iran is - I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here- the
worst idea in a long, sad history of bad ideas.

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sdinsn
And Iran carried out cyberattacks on us. Just continuing the status quo

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mfatica
And this is news why? The NYT has become a treasonous rag. If anything thinks
major state sponsored cyber attacks are not being carried out between world
powers they're either ignorant or having been paying attention. To call out
the US like this is a sham. How about the NYT times writes about the cyber
attacks carried out by China, Russia, Iran, NK, and more?

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dang
Would you please not use HN for political battle?

Also, you've posted a bunch of unsubstantive comments here. Please don't do
that; we're trying for something better than internet default on HN.

If you'd review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and take the spirit of this site to heart from now on, we'd appreciate it.

