My first blog entry for the semester concerns a topic that I hope to revisit. I have become increasingly interested in cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare between large entities, such as governments and multinational corporations, since the 2010 stuxnet virus. This new threat has been on the rise, and is the kind of captivating stuff that most people think only takes place in the movies. My first article for this project,"Virus Origin in Gulf Computer Attacks in Question," is written by Adam Schreck and concerns the recent targeted attacks of systems at two of the biggest Gulf energy companies, Saudi Aramco and RasGas. While the possible threat to Gulf oil amd gas supplies is a scary enough thought, I find Jeffrey Carr's supposition more alarming. According to the article, Carr, head of a Virginia based computer security firm, feels that the Iranian government, and hackers in their employ, carried out the attacks. He goes on to describe similarities between this new virus, named "Shamoon", and a virus that gave Iran big trouble in the past. The article goes so far as to say that Carr suggests, "That Iran-linked hackers may have created Shamoon by adapting computer code from the earlier virus."
The attacks on Saudi Aramco and RasGas are said to affect networked computers and may have caused considerable data loss. These attacks occurred in the Persian Gulf, but may have a link to Exxon Mobil, a company much closer to home. Because of the tightlipped security policies, we cannot know the true scope of the damage to any of these companies, but data loss is thought to be huge. The only positive to this situation is the fact that oil production was not halted, THIS TIME! The first attack occurred on August 15th and the second on August 27th. These two attacks are the only ones that have been confirmed. In the article, Israeli security expert, Aviv Raff, claims that more than just these two companies may have been affected by the virus attack. The true scope of this situation may just give us a clue as to the sophistication and size of the network that planned and executed this attack.
The attack on these two energy companies is only a small part of the bigger picture though. What Adam Schreck talks about towards the bottom of this article is what I found most interesting. He lays out examples as to how the various anti-American and anti-Israeli regimes in the Middle East are bolstering their ranks of cyber warriors. They have become increasingly organized and skilled. It was the paragraphs discussing this that have spurred my interest to follow this topic and learn as much as I can about it. Iran seems determined to do whatever it can to undermine the energy network of the US and Israel and any other pro-democracy nation. With our increasing dependence on computers and oil, Iran, Lebanon, and other nations with similar goals have another area to search for and exploit any weakness. Hopefully, more news will trickle onto the internet in the next few weeks as to the variety of businesses that suffered from this attack. This will give everyone a clearer picture as to what those responsible for our cyber security are up against.
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