PIERLUIGI PAGANINI: Iran, and her Oil Industry under cyber-attack, are we close to a military strike?

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SECURITY AFFAIRS.co; VIA:IranianCyberWarfare

by paganinip on April 24th, 2012

A new cyber-attack against Iran, in particular this time the Oil Industry was the target of a Malware Attack. The news was widespread by Officials in the Iranian oil ministry, they say that their network and the country’s main oil export terminal were infected with a malware; due this event the government has taken temporarily systems offline. An instance of the virus used for the attacks was found in the control systems of Kharg Island, the place provides a sea port for the export of oil and extends Iranian territorial sea claims into the Persian Gulf. The operations inside the terminal continued, no recording interruption due to the attack. According Iranian officials only one server was compromised, it was used to provide public information.

We all remember that the nation in 2010 was victims of another cyber attack, when the Stuxnet worm infected control systems inside nuclear plant in Iran. worldwide experts recognized in Stuxnet agents a powerful cyber weapon used to stop the nuclear program of the Iranian government. Immediately, experts have thought of that episode was related to the discovery made in recent months of a platform for the creation of similar cyber weapons, the “Tilded Platform“, assuming that the new virus was created by the same team.  The first news reported in security sector say that the malware used in the attack is not related to Stuxnet, so meanwhile the Stuxnet was developed by foreign governments to attack the Iran, at the moment it’s impossible to make hypothesis on the source of the malware. According the declaration of an Iranian oil ministry spokesperson the virus attacks has infected public servers that were immediately isolated, no particular damage were reported.

The Mehr News Agency revealed the National Iranian Oil Company and other businesses were under attack on Sunday 22th April, no information has been exposed and the attacks were successfully mitigated. It’s clear that behind the attacks there is a defined strategy to mine the main sector of the country, and Oil sector is the most important. The Government of Teharan is involved in a cyber war with the United States and Israel, periodically it reports cyber-attacks to its nuclear and industrial sectors, always declaring that minor damage were caused. Earlier this year, head of Iran’s civil defense agency Gholam Reza Jalali said the energy sector of the country has been a main target of cyber-attacks over last years.

As usual in similar case are circulating news not confirmed by the official sources. Many expert are convinced it is early to hazard hypothesis of connection with Stuxnet and Duqu. The first news related to the incident indicates that only the website of the oil ministry that was hit during the attacks and that not control systems was infected. If confirmed of course we can resize the impact of incident reformulating new hypotheses on its origin.

John Bumgarner, a security specialist with the think tank U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, declared to the Reuters Press that the purpose of similar malware is to attack the production processes erasing data and shutting down operations.

“The reason you would put a virus inside this network to erase data is because that causes those facilities to have to shut down” and to rebuild servers, he told Reuters.
“So during that time the production and refinery operations for Iran could be impacted. And depending on how the virus was written, it could be longer term.”

In the last months the Iran has been banned from the purchase of antivirus systems, a technological embargo with clear implications for the Stuxnet virus attacks and the need for the country to prevent further infections to industrial control systems for critical infrastructures. It was announced an international sanctions to stop the Government of Teheran from obtaining commercial anti-virus software, according to a senior Iranian intelligence official. The reply of Teharan was immediate, the announcement was been made public by FARS news agency, and Iranian Deputy National Security Minister for technical issues Ahangaran said the country is being forced to design its own anti-virus software due to the sanctions. Ahangaran said that Iran is unable update antivirus programs and combat Internet viruses because of the imposed ban.

To respond to the cyber-attacks and with the intent to be more active in the cyber warfare Iran has recently announced a series of cyber defense measures spearheaded by the Revolutionary Guards, the unit which already runs every key military program in Iran and many industries.  All the strategic servers of the government moved inside the country and for them special protection measures have taken, the Revolutionary Guard in March also set up an hack-proof communications network for its high-level officials.

   These are just last measures in order of times, we must consider that an emerging expertize in cyber warfare. Under Cyber warfare perspective we must consider Iranian expertise. During the protests after the disputed election in 2009 Iran has demonstrated to have the complete control of its cyberspace thanks the collaboration of western companies and to strategic alliance with technologic countries like China. The country is investing in cyber training program and in recruiting of young nationalist building a parallel covert cyber army already engaged to suppress domestic protest that could be easily employed like a cyber weapon against external enemies.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, IRGC, seems to have built one of the largest forces of hackers on the planet. “Emperor”, “Iran Hackers Sabotage” these are the names of the main group of hackers that during the last year have conducted several operation like destroy a government database or hack into two candidates’ websites. during the 2005 presidential election. If in terms of cyber offense Iran has a considerable force not so it can be said of cyber defense strategy.

Obviously not all hacking groups in Iran are under government control, emblematic is the case of a group that managed to carry out a fraud to the detriment of some banks in the country for several million dollars.

In May 2010, Ebrahim Jabbari, a provincial Revolutionary Guards commander, declared that the IRGC had the world’s second-largest cyber army at its disposal, the US intelligence is convinced of the potential of groups to the point of recognizing them as among the major cyber threats to the country.

In addition to cyber warriors and mercenaries, the Iran regime also has the control of the private IT firm Ashiyane Security Group, which has coordinated several cyber-attacks from Iran. Its illustrious victims are Mossad, Defence minister Ehud Barak, NASA and several websites in the Arab world. It is clear in my opinion that the cyber strategy aimed against Iran by Western governments are continuing to undermine the nuclear weapons ambitions of Teheran.

The embargo, in addition to reinforcing the belief that the dangerous virus was indeed developed by Israeli agents and / or the U.S., suggests that these countries are focusing their efforts in prelude to a conventional military offensive against Iran.
Are we also close to a military attacks against Iran?

Certainly events like this might make us think that the event is close, but I believe that its strategy against the Iranian government does not provide urgently the option of a military attack. The situation is very complex and there are interests too high that involve nations like Russia and China…

[…and ISRAEL, AZERBAIJAN, and GEORGIA;  and eventually, even IRAQ and TURKEY. (US/1)]

A possible U.S. or Israeli military attack could trigger a dangerous political situation with unpredictable consequences.

Pierluigi Paganini

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/4654/intelligence/iranoil-industry-under-cyber-attackare-we-close-to-a-military-strike.html?goback=.gmp_1271127.gde_1271127_member_110065323

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

Military.com: CIA-CTC Vet Checkmates UBL, At Long Last...

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The Man Who Hunted Osama Bin Missing

July 05, 2011

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- After U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the White House released a photo of President Obama and his Cabinet inside the Situation Room, watching the daring raid unfold.

Hidden from view, standing just outside the frame of that now-famous photograph was a career CIA analyst. In the hunt for the world's most-wanted terrorist, there may have been no one more important. His job for nearly a decade was finding the al-Qaida leader.

The analyst was the first to put in writing last summer that the CIA might have a legitimate lead on finding bin Laden. He oversaw the collection of clues that led the agency to a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His was among the most confident voices telling Obama that bin Laden was probably behind those walls.

The CIA will not permit him to speak with reporters. But interviews with former and current U.S. intelligence officials reveal a story of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the greatest counterterrorism success in the history of the CIA. Nearly all the officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or because they did not want their names linked to the bin Laden operation.

The Associated Press has agreed to the CIA's request not to publish his full name and withhold certain biographical details so that he would not become a target for retribution.

Call him John, his middle name.

John was among the hundreds of people who poured into the CIA's Counterterrorism Center after the Sept. 11 attacks, bringing fresh eyes and energy to the fight.

He had been a standout in the agency's Russian and Balkan departments. When Vladimir Putin was coming to power in Russia, for instance, John pulled together details overlooked by others and wrote what some colleagues considered the definitive profile of Putin. He challenged some of the agency's conventional wisdom about Putin's KGB background and painted a much fuller portrait of the man who would come to dominate Russian politics.

That ability to spot the importance of seemingly insignificant details, to weave disparate strands of information into a meaningful story, gave him a particular knack for hunting terrorists.

"He could always give you the broader implications of all these details we were amassing," said John McLaughlin, who as CIA deputy director was briefed regularly by John in the mornings after the 2001 attacks.

From 2003, when he joined the counterterrorism center, through 2005, John was one of the driving forces behind the most successful string of counterterrorism captures in the fight against terrorism: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi bin Alshib, Hambali and Faraj al-Libi.

But there was no greater prize than finding bin Laden.

Bin Laden had slipped away from U.S. forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, and the CIA believed he had taken shelter in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. In 2006, the agency mounted Operation Cannonball, an effort to establish bases in the tribal regions and find bin Laden. Even with all its money and resources, the CIA could not locate its prime target.

By then, the agency was on its third director since Sept. 11, 2001. John had outlasted many of his direct supervisors who retired or went on to other jobs. The CIA doesn't like to keep its people in one spot for too long. They become jaded. They start missing things.

John didn't want to leave. He'd always been persistent. In college, he walked on to a Division I basketball team and hustled his way into a rotation full of scholarship players.

The CIA offered to promote him and move him somewhere else. John wanted to keep the bin Laden file.

He examined and re-examined every aspect of bin Laden's life. How did he live while hiding in Sudan? With whom did he surround himself while living in Kandahar, Afghanistan? What would a bin Laden hideout look like today?

The CIA had a list of potential leads, associates and family members who might have access to bin Laden.

"Just keep working that list bit by bit," one senior intelligence official recalls John telling his team. "He's there somewhere. We'll get there."

John rose through the ranks of the counterterrorism center, but because of his nearly unrivaled experience, he always had influence beyond his title. One former boss confessed that he didn't know exactly what John's position was.

"I knew he was the guy in the room I always listened to," the official said.

While he was shepherding the hunt for bin Laden, John also was pushing to expand the Predator program, the agency's use of unmanned airplanes to launch missiles at terrorists. The CIA largely confined those strikes to targets along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But in late 2007 and early 2008, John said the CIA needed to carry out those attacks deeper inside Pakistan.

It was a risky move. Pakistan was an important but shaky ally. John's analysts saw an increase in the number of Westerners training in Pakistani terrorist camps. John worried that those men would soon start showing up on U.S. soil.

"We've got to act," John said, a former senior intelligence official recalls. "There's no explaining inaction."

John took the analysis to then CIA Director Michael Hayden, who agreed and took the recommendation to President George W. Bush. In the last months of the Bush administration, the CIA began striking deeper inside Pakistan. Obama immediately adopted the same strategy and stepped up the pace. Recent attacks have killed al-Qaida's No. 3 official, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, and Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

All the while, John's team was working the list of bin Laden leads. In 2007, a female colleague whom the AP has also agreed not to identify decided to zero in on a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, a nom de guerre. Other terrorists had identified al-Kuwaiti as an important courier for al-Qaida's upper echelon, and she believed that finding him might help lead to bin Laden.

"They had their teeth clenched on this and they weren't going to let go," McLaughlin said of John and his team. "This was an obsession."

It took three years, but in August 2010, al-Kuwaiti turned up on a National Security Agency wiretap. The female analyst, who had studied journalism at a select U.S. university, tapped out a memo for John, "Closing in on Bin Laden Courier," saying her team believed al-Kuwaiti was somewhere on the outskirts of Islamabad.

As the CIA homed in on al-Kuwaiti, John's team continually updated the memo with fresh information. Everyone knew that anything with bin Laden's name on it would shoot right to the director's desk and invite scrutiny, so the early drafts played down hopes that the courier would lead to bin Laden. But John saw the bigger picture. The hunt for al-Kuwaiti was effectively the hunt for bin Laden, and he was not afraid to say so.

The revised memo was finished in September 2010. John, by then deputy chief of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Department, emailed it to those who needed to know. The title was "Anatomy of a Lead."

As expected, the memo immediately became a hot topic inside CIA headquarters and Director Leon Panetta wanted to know more. John never overpromised, colleagues recall, but he was unafraid to say there was a good chance this might be the break the agency was looking for.

The CIA tracked al-Kuwaiti to a walled compound in Abbottabad. If bin Laden was hiding there, in a busy suburb not far from Pakistan's military academy, it challenged much of what the agency had assumed about his hideout.

But John said it wasn't that far-fetched. Drawing on what he knew about bin Laden's earlier hideouts, he said it made sense that bin Laden had surrounded himself only with his couriers and family and did not use phones or the Internet. The CIA knew that top al-Qaida operatives had lived in urban areas before.

A cautious Panetta took the information to Obama, but there was much more work to be done.

The government tried everything to figure out who was in that compound.

In a small house nearby, the CIA put people who would fit in and not draw any attention. They watched and waited but turned up nothing definitive. Satellites captured images of a tall man walking the grounds of the compound, but never got a look at his face.

Again and again, John and his team asked themselves who else might be living in that compound. They came up with five or six alternatives; bin Laden was always the best explanation.

This went on for months. By about February, John told his bosses, including Panetta, that the CIA could keep trying, but the information was unlikely to get any better. He told Panetta this might be their best chance to find bin Laden and it would not last forever. Panetta made that same point to the president

Panetta held regular meetings on the hunt, often concluding with an around-the-table poll: How sure are you that this is bin Laden?

John was always bullish, rating his confidence as high as 80 percent.

Others weren't so sure, especially those who had been in the room for operations that went bad. Not two years earlier, the CIA thought it had an informant who could lead him to bin Laden's deputy. That man blew himself up at a base in Khost, Afghanistan, killing seven CIA employees and injuring six others.

That didn't come up in the meetings with Panetta, a senior intelligence official said. But everyone knew the risk the CIA was taking if it told the president that bin Laden was in Abbottabad and was wrong.

"We all knew that if he wasn't there and this was a disaster, certainly there would be consequences," the official recalled.

John was among several CIA officials who repeatedly briefed Obama and others at the White House. Current and former officials involved in the discussions said John had a coolness and a reassuring confidence.

By April, the president had decided to send the Navy SEALs to assault the compound.

Though the plan was in motion, John went back to his team, a senior intelligence official said.

"Right up to the last hour," he told them, "if we get any piece of information that suggests it's not him, somebody has to raise their hand before we risk American lives."

Nobody did. Inside the Situation Room, the analyst who was barely known outside the close-knit intelligence world took his place alongside the nation's top security officials, the household names and well-known faces of Washington.

An agonizing 40 minutes after Navy SEALs stormed the compound, the report came back: Bin Laden was dead.

John and his team had guessed correctly, taking an intellectual risk based on incomplete information. It was a gamble that ended a decade of disappointment. Later, Champagne was uncorked back at the CIA, where those in the Counterterrorism Center who had targeted bin Laden for so long celebrated. John's team reveled in the moment.

Two days after bin Laden's death, John accompanied Panetta to U.S. Congress. The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted a full briefing on the successful mission. At one point in the private session, Panetta turned to the man whose counterterrorism resume spanned four CIA directors.

He began to speak, about the operation and about the years of intelligence it was based on. And as he spoke about the mission that had become his career, the calm, collected analyst paused, and he choked up.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press

FULL STORY HERE...

http://www.military.com/news/article/the-man-who-hunted-osama-bin-laden.html?ESRC=eb.nl

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

Fannie and Freddie: Georgia on their Minds?

BlackNET Intelligence Channel - LIMITED DISSEMINATION
SR-6; ProPublica.org; JAG/1; US/1; ATTN: US/12; FPC/1; HST/2

[ed.note: When the Russian Federation, furious over US covert Special Operations training and involvement the Georgian Republic during the Russian military incursion 2008 (Summer), finally agreed with the People’s Republic of China to threaten to pull out its $100 BILLION or so investment in FANNIE, along with the PRC’s approx. $340 BILLION, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. hand was forced to take over Freddie and FANNIE ($14 Trillion in potential liabilities), pushing the US banking system and its highly over-leveraged mortgage-backed derivatives and many other related CDSs and CDOs (Credit Default Swaps and Collateral Debt Obligations) TO THE BRINK of INSOLVENCY by the fateful CRASH of 15 September 2008.

Further narrative exposition, analysis and evidence reporting on said same, along with Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain’s provocatively immortal phrase, ‘We are all Georgians now,’ with be posted in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for ‘FANNIE FIDDLING: The Secret Georgian Connection to America’s Banking Collapse.’

NO DISSEMINATION above [Lifted]

OPEN SOURCE, below—Perhaps an ever more ominous reincarnation of the Republican Remnant of the 1999 Clinton Administration Glass-Steagal Social Security Privatization Plan—premised on the once and always apparently immutable Raines Rules of Unintended Consequences...?]

History Repeats Itself:

Wall St. Wants a Part of Fannie and Freddie’s Gov’t-Guaranteed Deal

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Jan. 21, 2011, 12:19 p.m.

As the White House considers how to reform [1] troubled mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie, some of the nation’s largest banks have piped up with their own suggestion. The New York Times reports that banks are suggesting that they be allowed to take over [2] some of Fannie and Freddie’s work of issuing securities backed by a government guarantee. That guarantee can be quite convenient for businesses, which get to keep the profits in good times and—as we saw during the housing market collapse—get to socialize the losses by passing them onto the government. From the Times:

The banks have presented their ideas publicly through trade groups. Housing industry consultants and people familiar with recent meetings at the Treasury Department say these banks view the government’s overhaul of the mortgage market as a potential profit opportunity.

This is something that nearly dates back to the beginning of mortgage securitization. Even in the '80s, Wall Street was looking for a way to cash in on the secondary mortgage market—in other words, looking for a way to get in on Fannie and Freddie's business. Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera give a quick refresher of this history in the first part of their new book [3], All the Devils are Here:

Wall Street realized it was never going to dislodge Fannie and Freddie from their dominant position as the securitizers of traditional mortgages. If it hoped to circumvent the GSEs [4] and keep all the profits to itself, Wall Street would have to find some other mortgage product to securitize, products that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t—or wouldn’t—touch.

What they found was riskier mortgages and subprime loans. As the Center for Public Integrity reminded us this week, it was Wall Street, after all, that led the way into the mortgage mess [5].

Fannie and Freddie were followers, lowering their underwriting standards when they realized they were losing market share. CPI reports:

Government data [6] shows Fannie and Freddie didn’t take the same risks that Wall Street’s mortgage-backed securities machine did. Mortgages financed by Wall Street from 2001 to 2008 were 4½ times more likely to be seriously delinquent than mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie.

… Fannie and Freddie, Cecala says, didn’t start making a big move into riskier mortgages until the mortgage boom was already under way, and they were fighting to reclaim market share they’d lost to more aggressive Wall Street players. Even then, they were more cautious than Lehman Brothers and other investment banks. For example, just over 15 percent of Fannie- and Freddie-backed loans made in 2007 have been seriously delinquent, compared to nearly 42 percent of mortgages bankrolled by Wall Street, according to the FHFA.

Nonetheless, Republicans have consistently blamed the mortgage giants for the financial crisis. GOP.gov calls Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “the main cause of the nation’s current financial turmoil [7].”

While there’s no doubt that Fannie and Freddie’s billion-dollar housing losses—which necessitated their government takeover in 2008—have cost taxpayers billions [8], at least one former Treasury official told the Times that having Wall Street take over Fannie and Freddie’s work is not a good idea.

Michael Barr, who worked on housing issues at the Treasury Department until last month, told the Times that although reforming the mortgage giants is necessary, allowing banks to issue government guarantees sets up the banks as a second-generation of Fannie and Freddie, creating “the same conflict we had in the past.”

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/history-repeats-itself-wall-st.-banks-gun-for-fannie-and-freddies-business

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]