'Legitimized' Cyberwar Opens Pandora's Box of Dirty Tricks 134
DillyTonto writes "U.S. officials have acknowledged playing a role in the development and deployment of Stuxnet, Duqu and other cyberweapons against Iran. The acknowledgement makes cyberattacks more legitimate as a tool of not-quite-lethal international diplomacy. It also legitimizes them as more-combative tools for political conflict over social issues, in the same way Tasers gave police less-than-lethal alternatives to shooting suspects and gave those who abuse their power something other than a club to hit a suspect with. Political parties and single-issue political organizations already use 'opposition research' to name-and-shame their opponents with real or exaggerated revelations from a checkered past, jerrymander districts to ensure their candidates a victory and vote-suppression or get-out-the-vote efforts to skew vote tallies. Imagine what they'll do with custom malware, the ability to DDOS an opponent's web site or redirect donations from an opponent's site to their own. Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
Re:acknowledged? (Score:5, Informative)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/01/did-a-us-government-lab-help-israel-develop-stuxnet/ [arstechnica.com]
The details seem to be built on the evidence found in the code, interviews over 18 months with current and former officials.
The need for testing the results on P-1 centrifuges puts the code creation in the hands of a few world powers.
Re:Another nail in the coffin (Score:5, Informative)
Iran/Persia was never part of the British Empire.The last time they started a war was in 1826 when they attacked Russia. The two nations had fought a number of wars before that so there was plenty of bad blood between the two. So not quite sure where your "part of one" comes from in relation to empires, but they had plenty of opportunity to be aggressive if they desire to be so.
This is the country that didn't use chemical weapons in the Gulf War (the real one, the one that killed a million people) despite Iraq doing so with the complicity of the US.
All I am saying is that when it comes to moral high ground, the US of A has plenty of looking up to do.
Re:acknowledged? (Score:5, Informative)