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Pedro Gonçalves

UPDATE 4-Powerful 'Flame' cyber weapon found in Iran | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...ar-flame-idUKL1E8GS1FJ20120528

Iran Israel US Cyber Warfare Stuxnet Duqu Flame

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 29 May 12 - No Cached
  • a highly sophisticated computer virus is infecting computers in Iran and other Middle East countries and may have been deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage. Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab
  • Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.
  • Kaspersky's research shows the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, then Sudan and Syria.
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  • Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.
  • There is some controversy over who was behind Stuxnet and Duqu. Some experts suspect the United States and Israel, a view that was laid out in a January 2011 New York Times report that said it came from a joint program begun around 2004 to undermine what they say are Iran's efforts to build a bomb.
  • Hungarian researcher Boldizsar Bencsath, whose Laboratory of Cryptography and Systems Security first discovered Duqu, said his analysis shows that Flame may have been active for at least five years and perhaps eight years or more. That implies it was active long before Stuxnet.
  • "The scary thing for me is: if this is what they were capable of five years ago, I can only think what they are developing now," Mohan Koo, managing director of British-based Dtex Systems cyber security company.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran sees second day of clashes as anger rises over elections | World news | guardian.c... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...an-election-clases-ahmadinejad

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mir Hossein Mousavi Ali Khamenei Saeed Laylaz

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Outraged supporters of the moderate candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi, who claimed his defeat in the Iranian election at the hands of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was manipulated, took to the streets of Tehran again today raising the prospect of more violent clashes.
  • In a sign of the anger among Mousavi's supporters, they chanted "the president is committing a crime and the supreme leader is supporting him", highly inflammatory language in a regime where the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is considered irreproachable.
  • Crowds also gathered outside Mousavi's headquarters but there was no sign of Ahmadinejad's chief political rival, who is rumoured to be under house arrest.
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  • Last night saw violent clashes after Ahmadinejad was confirmed as the winner of the presidential election on Friday, barely an hour after the polls had closed.Protesters set fire to rubbish bins and tires, creating pillars of black smoke among the apartment blocks and office buildings in central Tehran. An empty bus was engulfed in flames on a side road.
  • More than 100 reformists, including Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of former president Mohammad Khatami, were arrested last night, according to leading reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi. He told Reuters they were members of Iran's leading reformist party, Mosharekat.
  • A judiciary spokesman denied they had been arrested but said they were summoned and "warned not to increase tension" before being released.
  • Mousavi, who had been widely expected to beat the controversial incumbent if there was a high turnout - or at least do well enough to trigger a second round - insisted he was the victor and appealed against the result to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
  • But Khamenei replied that the election had been conducted fairly. He ordered the three defeated candidates and their supporters to avoid "provocative" behaviour. "All Iranians must support and help the elected president," he warned.
  • Israel reacted immediately by demanding intensified efforts to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
  • "The regime is making a decision to shape the direction of Iran for the next decade," Saeed Laylaz, a political analyst, said. "I'm sure they didn't even count the votes. I do not accept this result. It is false. It should be the opposite. If Ahmadinejad is president again, Iran will be more isolated and more aggressive. But he is the choice of the regime."
  • Laylaz had warned before the result that a second presidential term for Ahmadinejad could create a "Tiananmen-type" situation in Iran. Ominously, as three weeks of campaigning drew to a close last Wednesday, an official of the powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that any attempt at a popular "revolution" would be crushed.
  • Overt signs of repression included the failure of phone lines for hours after the polls closed and the blocking of the English and Persian-language websites of the BBC and Voice of America - which are regularly attacked by the Iranian authorities as "imperialist". Text messaging also failed.
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