Israeli Cyber-War with Iran
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Israel may have already started a war against Iran’s nuclear program – with computers.
Defense analysts believe Israel has been targeting the Islamic Republic’s computer networks, to gather intelligence on the nuclear program and also to launch cyber attacks against it.”
This has become a very important area in Israeli strategy, and it has to be taken into account,” said Alon Ben David, an Israeli defense specialist. “It has become a more and more important element both for intelligence gathering but also for aggressive operations.”
Experts believe Israeli intelligence agencies have been hacking into Iranian computer systems in an effort to disrupt or contaminate networks with viruses and malicious software.
“We came to the conclusion, for our purposes, a key Iranian vulnerability is in its online vulnerability,” an unnamed recently retired member of Israel’s security cabinet told the Reuters news agency. “We have acted accordingly.” (1)
A recent report, quoting an unnamed Israeli source, says the attacks may also allow Israel’s intelligence agencies to do more than just acquiring classified information.
“Aside from accessing secret data, we could also set off deliberate explosions, just by programming a re-route of the pipelines.”
Another method of sabotage mentioned in the report was the use of malware — a commonly used abbreviation for ‘malicious software’ — to “corrupt, commandeer or crash the controls of sensitive sites like uranium enrichment plants”.
As Iran’s nuclear assets would probably be isolated from outside computers, Israeli agents would have to conceal the malware in software used by the Iranians or discreetly plant it on portable hardware brought in, unknowingly, by technicians.
Last year, Iran arrested 45-year-old Ali Ashtari on charges of relaying sensitive information on military, defense and research centers to intelligence officers working for the infamous Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
In a video recorded and later broadcast by IRIB, Ashtari confessed that Mossad had paid him $50,000 to buy internet cables and satellite phones and then sell them on to ’special customers’ in the hope of enabling Israel to spy on their communications.
Israeli ‘handlers,’ whom Ashtari said he met in Thailand, Turkey and Switzerland, allegedly wanted him “to sell these terminals in Iran to special customers so they could hack into this equipment”. (2)
Sources:
(1) http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=8030578&page=1
(2) http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=100110§ionid=351020202
