Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

jpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 139 posts

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#111

Post by 13thLetter »

guelo wrote: post #79
13thLetter wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Israelis have bought our corruptible political system... This isn't Stormfront, or a British newspaper. Please take your Zionist conspiracy theories elsewhere.

Give me a break. It is not antisemetic to say that AIPAC is one of the most powerful lobbys in DC. Or that people like Sheldon Adelson are central to the election process. I'm not saying it's the only special interest undermining our democracy, I'm saying it's a big one and heavily influenced by a foreign country. If it were a heavily influential China lobby everyone would be freaking out.

But you didn't say that AIPAC is powerful (it is) or people like Sheldon Adelson are influential (they are.) You said:

"But Israelis have bought our corruptible political system to the point where all our politicians fight each other to prove who is more of a "friend" to Israel. If the US where acting in its real best interest it would keep Israel at much more of an arm's length. In a way Israel is much more of a dangerous enemy to American democracy than Iran, Russia, China or any other country."

That's a lot more serious than dispassionately noting how one nation among many that has an influential lobby in the United States.

But one other point that is worth considering: American public opinion of Israel is generally around 60% positive, 30% neutral, and 10% negative (source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/poally...). Is it particularly shocking that politicians go where the votes are? No conspiracy theory required.

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#112

Post by ihsw »

sigmar wrote: post #65
ars wrote: post #26

> In this way, after the strongest version of the virus was implanted in order to increase the force of the damage to the centrifuges at Natanz, the virus .... began to "jump from computer to computer" I don't see how one follows from the other. One talks about the virus causing additional damage to centrifuges rather than minor damage. The other is about increased infectiousness. They are two different things and th…

>The other is about increased infectiousness. Perhaps the additional damage is caused by increased infectiousness since the virus would be spread through more diverse intermediaries on its way to various centrifuge systems? >This article is almost completely devoid of any evidence, or even a plausible logical explanation/motivation. Well this article is reporting on what is stated in a forthcoming movie, not performi…

> Perhaps the additional damage is caused by increased infectiousness since the virus would be spread through more diverse intermediaries on its way to various centrifuge systems?

And there it is. Fingerprinting the variety of recipients takes time and effort, as well as producing viable payloads to assert control over them.

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#113

Post by brightball »

obrero wrote: post #105
brightball wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it's probably significantly simpler than that. The US is not threatened by Iran. At all. Israel is threatened by Iran and Iran's leaders have said they would wipe Israel off the map. For Israel, there was probably a greater sense of urgency than the level of patience that we were willing to use.

> Israel is threatened by Iran and Iran's leaders have said they would wipe Israel off the map. This was not said, it's just Zionist propaganda. Even the Washington Post says so ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-a... ). The fact that this lie is repeated over and over shows you how thoroughly Zionist propaganda has propagated through the US media.

That article also says the following, indicating that the propagation of this particular mistranslation was even done by Iran itself.

> But the story doesn’t end there. Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that Iranian government entities began to erect billboards and signs with the “wipe off” phrase in English. Joshua Teitelbaum of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs compiled an interesting collection of photographs of these banners, such as one on the building that houses reserve military forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world,” the sign reads in English."

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#114

Post by Sanddancer »

guelo wrote: post #101
chx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the relationship. One, there are civilians, extremely rich civilians who are sending more than a pretty penny to Israel. Two, the US government is essentially bribing the Israel government to stay put and not kill everyone around them. I believe most people vastly underestimate the military might of Israel. Did you know, for example, that Israel has unmanned ground vehicles https://en.wikipe…

That theory doesn't make much sense. If the policy is for preventing Israel from starting wars we wouldn't be bribing them with billions of dollars worth of weapons.

Conventional weapons. While Israel doesn't officially have nuclear weapons, it's a pretty open secret that they have a few dozen. By allowing Israel to posture with conventional weapons, the US is keeping Israel from going nuclear to solve problems. A nuclear strike in that region would be...problematic to say the least.

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#115

Post by ryanlol »

nathanlied wrote: post #27
ryanlol wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer arrogance with with $country operates is just something else.

Not all countries would be included there. The US? Russia? North Korea? Sure. Finland? Iceland? Not so much. There is something to be said about a country's foreign policy and how 'arrogant' it is. A country can have a solid foreign policy (read: not be a pushover) and still not act like a giant bully.

One could argue that the whole independence thing is pretty arrogant in the case of Finland for example.

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#116

Post by ufmace »

chx wrote: post #56
jorgecurio wrote: post #6

what confuses me about the US-Israeli relationship is that the most of the times they work well but at times one is always sabatoging each other in a manner that makes you reconsider, is Israel and enemy or a friend to the United States? I don't think Japan would pull off shit like this. It's like there's a four tier system to what defines a US Ally. Platinum - Gets you exclusive access to black funds & latest weapon…

I think you misunderstand the relationship. One, there are civilians, extremely rich civilians who are sending more than a pretty penny to Israel. Two, the US government is essentially bribing the Israel government to stay put and not kill everyone around them. I believe most people vastly underestimate the military might of Israel. Did you know, for example, that Israel has unmanned ground vehicles https://en.wikipe…

Their military is very effective in it's own way, but this comes at a cost - since the country is so small, a large-scale deployment means stripping much of the civilian economy bare of workers. They've got a good system going for short-term large-scale deployments to stop any of the large armies that their neighbors can more easily field, but they can't afford to keep an army of that size in the field for more than something like a month or two. Large-scale occupation is logistically out of the question, before strategic and political considerations are even taken into account.

They don't really have much to gain from trying to grab parts of Syria - they already have just the right amount of territory in the area to have very defensible borders. Taking more would give them territory much more vulnerable to attack, pretty much nothing in the way of natural resources, and most likely a population somewhere between neutral and hostile to manage. Not to mention that it would surely play rather poorly in the Arab world and the greater diplomatic community. Israel has done relatively well to conspicuously have no involvement in any of the Arab Spring rebellions.

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#117

Post by guelo »

Sanddancer wrote: post #114
guelo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory doesn't make much sense. If the policy is for preventing Israel from starting wars we wouldn't be bribing them with billions of dollars worth of weapons.

Conventional weapons. While Israel doesn't officially have nuclear weapons, it's a pretty open secret that they have a few dozen. By allowing Israel to posture with conventional weapons, the US is keeping Israel from going nuclear to solve problems. A nuclear strike in that region would be...problematic to say the least.

Seems like the conventional policy when faced with a militaristic regime hell bent on using nuclear weapons is to ostracize them in the international community and impose severe sanctions. Not give them as much advanced weaponry as possible.

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#118

Post by samstave »

dang wrote: post #100
JohnD19 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not any because the masters delete them. And "any" means any comment that is critical against Israel and is immediately flagged as "anti-semitic" by the watchdogs/lapdogs. What a discrace.

Comments critical of Israel are one thing (plenty of those in this thread), anti-semitic slurs are another. This is hardly a hard call. Also the 'masters' here are the users flagging the latter, quite rightly.

Reddit needs to learn this lesson!!

Thanks @Dang

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#119

Post by x5n1 »

13thLetter wrote: post #111
guelo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. It is not antisemetic to say that AIPAC is one of the most powerful lobbys in DC. Or that people like Sheldon Adelson are central to the election process. I'm not saying it's the only special interest undermining our democracy, I'm saying it's a big one and heavily influenced by a foreign country. If it were a heavily influential China lobby everyone would be freaking out.

But you didn't say that AIPAC is powerful (it is) or people like Sheldon Adelson are influential (they are.) You said: "But Israelis have bought our corruptible political system to the point where all our politicians fight each other to prove who is more of a "friend" to Israel. If the US where acting in its real best interest it would keep Israel at much more of an arm's length. In a way Israel is much more of a dan…

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spy-net-on-israel-snares-con...

"Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts."

Re: Unilateral Israeli changes to Stuxnet caused its exposure, angering US

#120

Post by rqebmm »

fsck--off wrote: post #52

If you want to read more about the two different Stuxnet attacks, I highly recommend Ralph Langner's 2013 write-up "To Kill A Centrifuge" http://www.langner.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/To-kill... (36 page PDF) Langner was the first researcher (outside of those who were involved in its creation) to discover Stuxnet.

It's interesting reading that doc in light of this news, as Langer notes that in 2009 the attack vector changed significantly, from a stealthy, bespoke, pressure-oriented attack, to a more vicious but easier to identify rotor-speed attack (the one we've all heard of), and also increased its infectivity by self-propagating.

> "Whatever the effect of the overpressure attack was, the attackers decided to try something different in 2009. That may have been motivated by the fact that the overpressure attack was lethal just by accident, that it didn’t achieve anything, or – that somebody simply decided to check out something new and fresh."

> "Summing up, the differences between the two Stuxnet variants discussed here are striking. In the newer version, the attackers became less concerned about being detected. It seems a stretch to say that they wanted to be discovered, but they were certainly pushing the envelope and accepting the risk."

> "The dramatic differences between both versions point to changing priorities that will most likely have been accompanied by a change in stakeholders. "

I wonder if that's when the Israelis got involved?

Also, this is shockingly readable for the depth and subject matter!

Post reply on HN