Monday, December 15, 2014

Eye on Iran: Iran Hackers May Target U.S. Energy, Defense Firms, FBI Warns








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Reuters: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned U.S. businesses to be on the alert for a sophisticated Iranian hacking operation whose targets include defense contractors, energy firms and educational institutions, according to a confidential agency document. The operation is the same as one flagged last week by cyber security firm Cylance Inc as targeting critical infrastructure organizations worldwide, cyber security experts said. Cylance has said it uncovered more than 50 victims from what it dubbed Operation Cleaver, in 16 countries, including the United States... Cylance Chief Executive Stuart McClure said the FBI warning suggested that the Iranian hacking campaign may have been larger than its own research revealed. 'It underscores Iran's determination and fixation on large-scale compromise of critical infrastructure,' he said. The FBI's technical document said the hackers typically launch their attacks from two IP addresses that are in Iran, but did not attribute the attacks to the Tehran government. Cylance has said it believes Iran's government is behind the campaign, a claim Iran has vehemently denied... Cyber security professionals who investigate cyber attacks said that they are seeing evidence that Iran's investment is paying off. 'They are good and have a lot of talent in the country,' said Dave Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSEC LLC. 'They are definitely a serious threat, no question.'" http://t.uani.com/1Az6TbV

Reuters: "Iran has supplied weapons, money and training to the Shi'ite Houthi militia that seized Yemen's capital in September, as Tehran steps up its regional power struggle with Saudi Arabia, Yemeni and Iranian officials say... Reuters has details -- from Yemeni, Western and Iranian sources -- of Iranian military and financial support to the Houthis before and after their takeover of Sanaa on Sept. 21... A senior Yemeni security official said Iran had steadily supported the Houthis, who have fought the central government since 2004 from their northern stronghold of Saadah. 'Before the entrance into Sanaa, Iran started sending weapons here and gave a lot of support with money via visits abroad,' the official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters. A second senior Yemeni security official said 'weapons are still coming in by sea and there's money coming in through transfers'... A senior Iranian official told Reuters that the Quds Force, the external arm of the Revolutionary Guard, had a 'few hundred' military personnel in Yemen who train Houthi fighters. He said about 100 Houthis had traveled to Iran this year for training at a Revolutionary Guards base near the city of Qom... The official said there were a dozen Iranian military advisers in Yemen, and the pace of money and arms getting to the Houthis had increased since their seizure of Sanaa. 'Everything is about the balance of power in the region. Iran wants a powerful Shi'ite presence in the region that is why it has got involved in Yemen as well,' said the Iranian official. Salah al-Sammad, a senior Houthi adviser to the Yemeni president, denied Iran had provided arms but said Iranian backing was part of a shared vision in 'confronting the American project.'" http://t.uani.com/1yS2VJp

NYT: "Ms. Moghimi's unyielding optimism, shared by many top businesspeople here, was dented briefly last month when nuclear negotiators agreed to a second extension of the talks without even a framework for further negotiations. But it is almost an article of faith in business circles that the latest extension is only the postponement of an inevitable thaw between Iran and the rest of the world. 'The world needs this deal; we need this deal,' Ms. Moghimi said. 'It will happen.' Both moderates and conservatives have expressed concerns about the unchecked rise in expectations, among the public as well as among elite business classes, that a deal will be cinched. They have been warning that the enthusiasm could turn to bitter disappointment if the negotiations, set to resume in Geneva next week, should fail, possibly touching off unrest or what some clerics call 'another sedition,' a reference to the revolt that followed disputed presidential elections in 2009. 'The prospect of a better future is enough to make them forget their problems for now,' said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst. 'Later, we will see if that state of mind will prove to be costly for us.' The confidence is beginning to take on a life of its own, with executives in the major export industries - oil and gas, transportation and carpets - feverishly preparing for what they envision as gloriously prosperous days ahead. Meeting with foreign businesspeople at the conferences that are springing up regularly in Tehran, they are knocking out memorandums of understanding and other nonbinding agreements and even some contracts - all with caveats saying sanctions must be lifted first." http://t.uani.com/1zWgc7K

Nuclear Program & Negotiations

AFP: "Publicly, they are the best of friends working to seal a historic deal to stop Iran's march to a nuclear bomb. But behind closed doors, diplomats from France and the United States barely hide their frustration. For years, France has been viewed as the toughest member of the group of powers known as the P5+1, after feeling burned in previous pacts under which Tehran covertly continued to advance its atomic ambitions... One of France's main concerns is the incomplete Arak heavy water reactor, which when it eventually comes online could be used to make plutonium for an atomic bomb. Paris is said to have pushed for stringent inspections of Iran's nuclear energy program, and a broad dismantling of facilities and centrifuges... Privately, American officials say there has been concern in Washington over the French position of publicly playing hardball, but then not backing up their words in the negotiations." http://t.uani.com/1qRBLoa

Free Beacon: "A credible U.S. military option against Iran is off the table and something the Obama administration can 'no longer even think about,' according to one of Iran's top military leaders, who claimed in a wide-ranging interview that Iran has deployed advanced missiles and satellites capable of tracking foreign militaries. Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), scoffed at the Obama administration's insistence that a credible military option exists against Iran and discussed the Islamic Republic's offensive military capabilities during a wide-ranging interview on Iranian state-run television... 'We have denied our enemy any military option,' Salami said in an interview on Iranian television just days after the Nov. 24 extension in talks was announced. 'The enemy can no longer even think about a military option.' ... The military leader went on to provide further confirmation that Iran is arming Palestinian terrorist in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Relatedly, Hamas officials were in Tehran this week to renew its anti-Israel military alliance with Iran. 'I am sure that the day will come-and that day is not far off-when the West Bank will become a living hell for the security of the Zionists,' he said. 'We shall see the day when the children of the West Bank and Gaza will hold hands. Allah willing, that day is near.'" http://t.uani.com/1svb6P9 

Cyber Warfare

Bloomberg Businessweek: "Most gamblers were still asleep, and the gondoliers had yet to pole their way down the ersatz canal in front of the Venetian casino on the Las Vegas Strip. But early on the chilly morning of Feb. 10, just above the casino floor, the offices of the world's largest gaming company were gripped by chaos. Computers were flatlining, e-mail was down, most phones didn't work, and several of the technology systems that help run the $14 billion operation had sputtered to a halt. Computer engineers at Las Vegas Sands Corp. raced to figure out what was happening. Within an hour, they had a diagnosis: Sands was under a withering cyber attack. PCs and servers were shutting down in a cascading IT catastrophe, with many of their hard drives wiped clean. The company's technical staff had never seen anything like it...  The company is still tallying the damage. Documents and interviews with people involved in Yellowstone 1 show that the hackers' malicious payload wiped out about three-quarters of the company's Las Vegas computer servers. Leven, in a brief interview last month before a private event, estimated that recovering data and building new systems could cost the company $40 million or more... Investigators from Dell SecureWorks working for Sands have concluded that the February attack was likely the work of 'hacktivists' based in Iran, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek. The security team couldn't determine if Iran's government played a role, but it's unlikely that any hackers inside the country could pull off an attack of that scope without its knowledge, given the close scrutiny of Internet use within its borders. 'This isn't the kind of business you can get into in Iran without the government knowing,' says James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington." http://t.uani.com/1zfu2SK  
   
Sanctions Relief

Bloomberg: "The five-year rally in Iranian stocks is coming to an end as optimism fades that President Hassan Rouhani can resolve an international standoff over the Islamic republic's nuclear program. The Tehran Stock Exchange Index has lost 20 percent in 2014, set for the first yearly decline since 2008, as petrochemical companies and lenders plunged, bourse data show. Over the previous five years, shares soared 910 percent, or about 300 percent in dollar terms after factoring in the rial's declines... The Iranian rial has tumbled about 14 percent against the dollar in the past year, according to figures compiled by Daily Rates for Gold Coins & Foreign Currencies, a Facebook page used by traders and companies in Iran and abroad." http://t.uani.com/13qmhxe

Trend: "The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) delivered nearly 360 million cubic meters of gas to Iran within swap operations in Jan.-Nov. 2014, a source at SOCAR told Trend... The source said that the volume of gas deliveries to Iran will reach around 400 million cubic meters by late 2014. The volume of gas supplies to Iran will reach about 400 million cubic meters before the end of 2014, according to the source." http://t.uani.com/1wIzAGd

Reuters: "South Korea's imports of Iranian crude oil rose 6.5 percent in November from a year earlier, but shipments for the first 11 months of the year were still below the 2013 average, in line with international sanction requirements. Preliminary customs data from the world's fifth-largest crude oil importer showed on Monday that Seoul bought 567,611 tonnes of crude oil from Tehran last month, or 138,686 barrels per day (bpd), compared with 532,851 tonnes a year ago. Iranian crude shipments between January and November were 5.65 million tonnes, or 124,012 bpd, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier and 7.5 percent below the 2013 average of 134,000 bpd, according to the data and Reuters calculations." http://t.uani.com/1w9NEqv

Terrorism

AFP: "The Islamic militant group Hamas staged a show of strength to mark its 27th anniversary Sunday, with a military parade through Gaza including a flyover by a drone... On the ground, rocket and mortar launchers trundled through the rain-swept Gaza streets along with thousands of masked, black-clad and helmeted fighters of Hamas's military arm, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades... Qassam spokesman Abu Obeida praised Iran for its support. 'Thank you to all the people and the countries, first among which is the Islamic Republic of Iran which did not skimp on money, weapons and other things and provided the resistance with rockets,' he said in a speech." http://t.uani.com/1BJxAvR

Opinion & Analysis

Roger Cohen in NYT: "There is an enormous amount to be done. Mismanagement has been the curse of Iran. Banks, obliged to make nonperforming loans to state companies, are largely insolvent. A privatization program was bungled. There are water shortages. The Internet goes out all the time. The nuclear program, the object of the overwhelming bulk of attention paid to Iran, has itself been a colossal exercise in mismanagement, whatever else it may be: The cost of generating electricity from the nuclear facility at Bushehr has been beyond astronomical. A young population is frustrated, tired of Iran's pariah status, and eager to join the world, as President Hassan Rouhani has promised it will." http://t.uani.com/1ITpHIW
    

Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com

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