Cyber Warfare 2.0 : Operation Myrtus

Never mind the jargon  (or hyperbole if you would prefer) in the title, cyber warfare has indeed been taken to the next level in last  two years. The latest cyber-attack on Iran through the malware "Flame" (dubbed Stuxnet 2.0) wasn't surprising enough, it was expected. In a post I had made on October 2010, regarding the advent of cyber-weapon in most probability, Stuxnet being a precursor to a range of cyber weapons. After all Stuxnet had proved that a  cleverly crafted code snippet  can do what perhaps air-strikes may not be able to. This malware was successful in taking over control the computers in one of Iran's nuclear research facility,destroying centrifuges and pushing Iran's nuclear programme some years back. Given the huge return on investment, , 0 casualty  and stealthiness it provided, cyber weapons if properly executed, it is only natural that other nation-states follow the same.

Posted By Danish 5:46 PM

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Age of Cyber Warfare : The Advent of Cyber Weapon

In last few years there have been some major cyber-attacks involving nation states such as China  and Russia but the latest Stuxnet worm attack, takes cyber warfare to another level, where the damage may not be confined to digital assets but also to the physical world. Most security experts believe that the Stuxnet worm's design and perceived objectives indicates that the was aimed to disrupt Iranian nuclear program and most likely it was successful too.

Posted By Danish 2:16 AM

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Cyber-Warfare And Mercenaries on the Web

Iranian Cyber Army hacking and defacing Twitter may be part of a broader strategy of the Iranian government and military to control the flow of information from its own territories as well as information directed at it from external sources.This is the contention of a Techcrunch article which has also been published in Washington Post.

If you are an active Social Web user then you must already know about the role Twitter played during the post-election turmoil in Iran. Not only was it the main service for communication among the protesters and the primary source of news coming out from Iran but it was also the platform on which a major social media campaign was launched to mobilize public opinion against the Iranian regime. Although,it was supposed to be a campaign by Iranians anti- government protesters, the West's involvement was quite conspicuous. As a matter of fact US administration intervened and Twitter rescheduled its maintenance downtime in view of the volatile conditions in Iran. I had posted my observations on this development in one of my previous blog entry, please check out (Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?). This campaign was seen by Iran as an attempt by the West to exploit political turmoil in the region to destabilize the state. Thus, this latest attack and defacement can be seen as a retaliation.

However, the Techcrunch article goes on to hint that the attack may have been launched as part of a much larger plan!  Apparently, Iran has on Friday said that it is creating more efficient centrifuges that can be used in its nuclear plan by 2011. This and other reports like Iraq  accusing Iranian forces infiltrating into its territory are being seen as part of a larger diplomatic offensive ahead of the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. The cyber attack on Twitter as well as some other anti-government sites could be politically motivated to send a message to the West that Iran is capable of engaging the adversary in cyber warfare too. This message would sound far more ominous when we look at the conflict from the prism of asymmetric warfare.

Only time can tell how accurate this speculation is, but i myself have little doubt that the internet is fast becoming an arena of political games; games that go beyond mere propaganda campaigns,crowdsourced diplomacy to system disruption through Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In one of my earlier posts ( Is Cyber-Warfare On Social Web same as Terrorism  ) i have discussed how politically motivated attacks and nation-states conflicts spilling over to the internet are affecting the common users, this could be another instance of it. However, it is not really clear if this group called Iranian Cyber Army is indeed a government supported group or just another group of nationalistic individuals acting on their own accord but with the tacit approval of the Iranian government. The flaw in the argument is that an hitherto unknown group of hackers, taking down Twitter may hardly procure any bargaining power for the Iranian regime! No doubt Iran is actively pursuing its nuclear program as well as cyber-warfare capability, but why should the US and EU concede any  ground to it because it could take down a popular micro-blogging site ? From another perspective, it is quite possible that this news report may be part of the social media campaign against the Iranian regime that has been going  for quite sometime.

Posted By Danish 3:20 PM

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Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?

For the past 24 hours #Iranelection and hash tags related to Iranian election has been trending on Twitter . What it essentially means, (for those unfamiliar with Twitter) is that the election in Iran and its fallout are the most talked about topic on Twitter. We have already seen the profound impact ¹ that Twitter has had on socio-political events in the past but this could be the biggest one considering the fact that the mainstream media was late in reporting the protests and has since been lagging behind the micro-blogging service. ( Please check out, Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter For News About Iran )

However, what really intrigues me is the question, whether the protest in Iran truly reflects the aspiration of the nation as a whole or is just a partisan struggle fueled by external powers. Once again the sources of most these news are either almost anonymous twitterers or those belonging to the opposition camp. The truth perhaps lies somewhere in between, the call for probe by Ayotallah Khameini indicates it. Ironically, Ashton Kucher, who has the largest following in Twitter, has likened the issue to the controversy around G.W. Bush's electoral victory in 2000!

Either way it is Iran's internal issue, it is, after all, the only country in the region that has some sort of democracy (that has not been forced on). So why is the global social media so obsessed with Iranian election results ? I guess it has more to do with the fact that the West is not comfortable with the fact that a hardliner like Ahmadinejad came so close to defeat and still survive. Of course, i am just speculating that he survived but anyway, this was an opportunity that a lot of people would have hated to let go of. That would also explain why the opposition is on the street but euphemisms like "tweeting revolution", coming from American and West European "social media activists" seem to me part of propaganda warfare in the lines of black operations. Only this time the agenda has been outsourced to the crowd populating the social web. John Robb has in his earlier blog posts discussed various 4GW strategies and manoeuvres that the US could adopt to bring down Iran, some of the proposed ones have been black operations of these nature.

At this juncture ishould confess that i don't have much love for Ahmadinejad nor for the ruling elite of Iran, but i cannot deny the fact that he has considerable support from the Iranian electorate as the numerous pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrations indicate. So all talks of freedom and democracy by activists on web sound hollow when one considers the fact that there was hardly any murmur of protest when China banned nearly all major web sites and services on the anniversary of the Tianmen massacre. Similarly, the torch-bearers of liberty and democracy were conspicuously silent when just few weeks back the Burmese junta filed fresh case against the famous Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi just days before her 13 year old detention was about to expire! As i have already mentioned what we are witnessing might well be a crowdsourced black operation, not unlike propaganda warfare except for the fact that in this instance its far too decentralized and viral in nature. The majority of the participants may actually have no clue about the underlying agenda if at all there is one !

Update:
1. Twitter one hour maintenance downtime has been postponed as demanded by bloggers/twitterers.

Posted By Danish 4:06 AM

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