Iran Hacks US Spy Sites

superapecommando writes "Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps hacked into 29 websites affiliated with US espionage networks, Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported on Sunday. 'The hacked websites acted against Iran's national security under the cover of human rights activities,' Fars reported. It did not disclose details of the attacks. The Internet has been used by Iranian opposition groups who contested the results of last year's elections there to organize demonstrations and share information about protests and arrests. The Revolutionary Guards is a military group that was founded after Iran's 1979 revolution. The group includes conventional army, navy, air force, and intelligence units, as well as the Basij paramilitary force and various business units."

Re:When are they

[NotBornYesterday]

Who is the "they" you are referring to? Just to clarify, the Iranians themselves are claiming they hacked these sites, not the US.

Re:Amazing

[HungryHobo]

This still isn't a "cyberwar" this is just iran arresting human rights activists and calling them spies/traitor with a thin justification.

Anything governments try is still lost in the noise http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/ [attrition.org]

Re:Not that I put a lot of trust in *our* reports

[nicolas.kassis]

Well, I think what they were trying to prevent is those site providing information to the opposition inside the country. I don't think they meant attacking Iranian's IT infrastructure with websites. Just helping the opposition organize and give them information. In that sense I see why they would want to shut those sites down. On the other hand, I think those sites might be a good thing if they help the Iranian opposition group organize but I'm a biased westerner.

Not very impressive..

[Ziekheid]

Government related sites are hacked continously, it's just that only few stories actually arrive in "mainstream" media about it.
Have a look at the zone-h archive of defacements and note the number of .gov.X sites in the list: http://zone-h.org/archive/special=1 [zone-h.org]

Bad Article Title

[introspekt.i]

The title acts as if Iran actually did hack 29 US "spy sites" (wtf). Whether or not this is actually true remains to be seen. The article has a little trouble using quotations, or at least maybe that's how people do it in the UK? I don't mean that as an offense, but rather, in US papers we seem to pepper the articles with double quote marks.

It was not clear whether HRAI had ties to US intelligence organisations or whether the Fars report labeled them as such due to their apparent sympathy for opposition protesters. The Fars report did not tie any of the websites to a specific US government entity.

This article seems shoddy to me, as these claims are as of yet unsubstantiated. Why doesn't Iran use its magic firewall to block these sites instead of hack them? Smells like a publicity stunt against to me.

Re:Worst summary ever

[Sollord]

As much as I dislike Fox News comparing them to fars news is just not fair.

Re:Bad Article Title

[LWATCDR]

A terrible story with a terrible summary on the font page of Slashdot.
So what else is new?
Really I tend to give the slashdot some slack but this is just terrible. I mean really what are they thinking. And yes I know CW posted this trash but Slashdot doesn't have to repeat it.

Re:Spy Websites?!?

[sjames]

They were only U.S. spy sites in the sense that officially no right thinking Iranian would be against the government, so it would have to be a CIA plot Q.E.D.

Re:Worst summary ever

[DJ Jones]

OK... and Fox News is the mouth piece of the Republican Party. The fact that Rupert Mudoch's media machine is openly against a democratic administration is not surprising to anyone. My analogy is not flawed, I merely alluded to the fact that the opinions put forth by both Fox News and Fars News are decided well before the facts are divulged. They are equivalent propaganda machines with heavy ties to one political party. Neither one can be considered a respectable "news" organization by any journalistic standards.

Re:Spy Websites?!?

[GuruBuckaroo]

Any serious spies are going to communicate through some deniable,encrypted,stenographic channel so my money is on these poor fuckers being genuine human rights activists who are just going to be called spies and shot.

I think you meant steganographic there. Stenography is shorthand, steganography is hiding content in ways that hide the fact that there is hidden content at all.

Re:Spy Websites?!?

[hey!]

What they're talking about websites that are critical of human rights in Iran. Their contention is that all the bad news about Iran is a western psy-ops ploy.

Calling such sites "spy websites" is not an oxymoron by any means. Spying isn't just about getting information; it's about planting disinformation too.

The domains they are targeting mostly belong to one "KEYVAN RAFIEE", with a contact address in a small suburban condo building in Silver Spring MD. It is also the same address used for a small media production company. Some of the domains under that name have as contract address a private home in Woodland CA.

Overall, this not inconsistent with this Mr. Rafiee being a private human rights activist, nor with him being a frontman for a US intelligence operation.

That said, the most credible explanation is this is just disinformation on Iran's part. We've all seen the riots, which were definitely not staged. We've all heard the pronouncements of Mr. Ahmadinejad, which stink of propaganda. This does not mean *we* don't have our own propaganda, but it's clear that the Iranian government would try to portray any criticism as being from the CIA, especially given the CIA's unfortunate history in that country.