President Obama Ordered Stuxnet and More Attacks on Iran (June 1, 2012)

  --President Obama Ordered Stuxnet and More Attacks on Iran (June 1, 2012)

(By Gautham Nagesh, CQ Executive Briefing on Technology)

The New York Times has a bombshell this morning: President Obama began
ordering cyberattacks on Iran within days of taking office. The story,
which is a must-read, finally confirms what many cybersecurity experts
have suspected: the Stuxnet worm, which disabled industrial equipment
in Iran and Europe, was originally designed by Israel and the U.S. to
slow down Iran's nuclear enrichment plant. The virus' escape from Iran's
Natanz plant and subsequent discovery in Germany in 2010 was a mistake
that U.S. authorities blamed on Israel. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden
also acknowledged to the Times that Stuxnet is the first major
cyberattack intended to cause physical destruction (to Iranian
centrifuges). "Somebody crossed the Rubicon," he said.

The article includes a history of the classified cyberweapons program,
dubbed "Olympic Games," which began under President Bush, and includes
details of how President Obama decided that digital attacks were
preferable to a potential military conflict between Iran and Israel. But
the bottom line is that President Obama (and his predecessor) ordered a
sophisticated campaign of cyberattacks against Iran's nuclear program,
and has either attacked or considered attacking networks in China,
Syria, and North Korea as well. The Obama administration previously
acknowledged that it might respond to cyberattacks with physical force,
but the report makes it clear that even as the U.S. was making those
threats, it was perpetrating cyberattacks on the very nations it accuses
of targeting its networks.

In doing so, the White House has seemingly opened a Pandora's box.