Flaming the Flame: The Case of the Mysterious Cyberleaks
Those perspicacious bloodhounds at the Washington Post reported today that U.S. and Israeli agents were the “clever boots” collaborating on the recently revealed “Flame” virus that has been infecting (mostly) Iranian computers of late. They published this “astonishing” news the very day Iran nuclear talks with the so-called 5+1 broke down for what feels like the five thousandth time.
Coinky-dinky?
I think not. It’s not even particularly surprising news, even though it did generate a Drudge link (no siren, however).
What’s interesting is the timing of the leak and its purpose. After all, it had long been reported, surmised earlier, that the same two countries had combined forces on “Stuxnet” and, as our ever-collegial Russian friends informed us, “Flame” was a veritable “Son of Stuxnet.” Like love and marriage, you couldn’t have one without the other.
So what’s the game? Why now and how did it happen?
As most of us in the news biz know, true investigative reporting is an extreme rarity, basically non-existent. To get a scoop that way, you would have to do some real work. That’s for college kids — or used to be. Most scoops arrive in much simpler fashion — by phone. Someone has something to leak. In this case that someone is an intelligence official with an axe to grind — exactly the kind of person you don’t want in your foxhole.
But never mind, why’d they do it? The superficial logic is to hype Barack Obama’s national security bona fides. Our president and his “great friend” Benjamin Netanyahu are working together to defend us against the Mad Mullahs. Vote Barack. Save Israel. Or something like that.
Well, maybe. But not bloody likely. Beyond the obvious that Obama has already made his disdain for Netanyahu painfully obvious, the WaPo report contains the following giveaway paragraph:
Flame was developed at least five years ago as part of a classified effort code-named Olympic Games, according to officials familiar with U.S. cyber-operations and experts who have scrutinized its code. The U.S.-Israeli collaboration was intended to slow Iran’s nuclear program, reduce the pressure for a conventional military attack and extend the timetable for diplomacy and sanctions.
Hold on – “at least five years ago”? That’s puts Flame’s instigation well back into the Bush administration. In fact, if Stuxnet predates Flame at all, as it sounds like it did, we could be considerably further back than that, in the early days of Bush.
So Obama had nothing to do with establishing this program, though I imagine he could have deep-sixed it. But that might well have been leaked on its own accord, creating a huge embarrassment for the new president and damaging him with Jewish voters, among others. Best to leave alone.
No, something else is going on here. And it is yet more nefarious, perhaps as nefarious as the execrable leakers themselves. It comes at a moment when it seems the talks with Iranians have finally imploded. In a sense they were always a charade, but now even the pretense that something could be worked out with the Islamic regime is disappearing. Yet more meetings in other venues have been reduced to farce. No one is even paying lip service to them. Soon, even the New York Times will be too ashamed to recommend more negotiation.
What is left but the use of force?
Well, nothing, assuming you don’t want the Iranians to have nuclear weapons. But that’s the problem. The liberal-left in our culture abhors the use of force. There must be an alternative and that is…
Cyberwar. It’s successful and it’s ongoing – at least according to the leakers and those in whose behalf they are leaking. They want us to believe that these high tech maneuvers are succeeding and will continue to succeed in keeping nukes out of the hands of the mullahs. They want us to rely on these means and not resort to violence.
Of course, this depends on the mullahs being nitwits. While that’s a tempting thought, I’m not so sure. I think even the average seventh grader would have battened down the cyber hatches by now, making the likelihood of someone slipping a loaded thumb drive in some Iranian scientist’s computer far less likely than it was.
But that doesn’t stop the leakers. Nothing does, apparently.
They have their reasons. What do you think they are?
The leakers are motivated by desire to help our Islamic enemies and to hurt Christians, Jews, and American citizens in general.
Our own president is selling out Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Maybe it’s just psy-ops? It was leaked because the Iranians had discovered Flame. Therefore the Flame was no longer a useful intelligence asset so let’s publicly cash in on it. By publicly rubbing Iran’s nose in the facts of our successful cyber warfare we make the Iranian regime look incompetent to everyone.
Stuff like this has got to be making them jumpy. They’ll end up seeing spies everywhere and not be able to concentrate on their nuclear program. They’ll spend more time chasing shadows than chasing uranium enrichment results.
Can anyone tell me why our pipsqueak president still sits in the WH ?
We have little knowledge of his past, records that are questionable, his own
statements today in stark opposition to his of yesterday. Clear to even his ignorant. misguided followers his sneering disregard of his rights under the constitution. And here we sit and watch while he violates rule after rule of
the office he holds. Leaks ?? Only a drop in his bucket of slimy crimes against
the country he swore to defend. I say, put him in jail. Now.
I couldn’t agree more.
For another opinion, see this interesting exchange nearby.
Vodka Pundit:
2. Charlie Griffith
This,
…”Hold Your Nose and Vote for Obama.”
…..is just about the silliest and most irresponsible, adolescent minded comment I’ve yet seen at PJMedia.
Is it supposed to be witty?
June 19, 2012 – 5:40 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Stephen Green
No, it’s the essence of what none other than Van Jones said at Netroots last week, which you’d have known if you had bothered to watch the Trifecta before commenting.
June 19, 2012 – 5:47 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Charlie Griffith
Liberals holding their noses and planning on voting for their Obama in spite of his alarming lack of substance, and amplified by his Oval Office tenure for the past two years or so, apparently based upon his ‘charismatic’ half-Blackness before or after any particular year, any year at all in his curious and partially unexamined, varied life……remains irresponsible and adolescent. It’s casting a precious vote into a gutter. It’s a different kind of spite, it’s a stick-it-to-the-”man”-attitude.
Video pundits are included, those who stoop so low on camera to offer up such “comments” on such an alarming President. It’s a disservice (even) to the record of Jimmuh Cahtuh.
Washington D.C. once had a notorious Black Mayor, Marion Barry, who was lionized during his escapades with women, and then snuffing up heroin on a video, no less; an icon of the Liberals in the District. Those who may’ve gleefully held their noses and voted to re-elect him Mayor exercised such an adolescent attitude toward their vote. I think he’s still on some elected Committee or other in the District.
It’s enough to justify the reverting to 18th Cent. property-holding rules for voting privileges.
June 19, 2012 – 6:50 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Stephen Green
If I may paraphrase Dan Ackroyd…
Charlie, you ignorant slut.
None of us said any such thing, which you would know if you had read my response to your first comment slowly enough to comprehend it. Or, having comprehended it, perhaps you just couldn’t bother yourself to Google “Van Jones” if you couldn’t place the name.
Either way, I’m begging you to please stop embarrassing yourself in a public forum.” End Paste.
…..whew!
These leaks are really being made to harm the future Romney administration. The obama campaign knows from their own internal polling that they are unlikely to win in November and they are attempting to poison the intelligence relationships that President Romney would need to defend the US and our interests against terrorism. The strategey being that if Romney does not have working intel relationships with our allies it is more possible that the terrorists will be able to strike America thus giving the dems an issue to use against Romney and the repubs in a future election.
Our own administration is guilty of executing a Burned Earth strategy? You don’t say….
What am I saying…”Our” administration? Please, what am I thinking?? He has done nothing but distance himself from us (his “enemies”) since day one. He’s not “our” President at all, and legally speaking, he may not actually be President of anything at all…
Maby they realize the jig is up. And even though,the Titanic has already hit the ice berg,they are still trying to do as much damage as they can, by opening up the sea cox. Their lifeboat is already waiting for them, well stocked with their ill gotten gains. And now they can still row off and watch the ship go down and enjoy the scene. They know that they are well provisioned, and that a rescue ship will whisk them away,in the morning. To a new life ,and a new mission. There are always more ships being built, and more dreams that must be destroyed. Anything to hasten the end, and then they will rule forever.
Imagery a bit too flowing, Gus. But you may be right. Your comments remind me of the out-going Clinton admin, pardoning terrorists and tax cheats, trashing the White House, and removing “W” keys from WH keyboards. The behavior might simply be childish.
This administration and ALL Democrats are acting like they desire Iran, not only to have nuclear weapons, but to use them on . . . Or it could be a tactic to force Israel to use nucs on Iran’s facilities. Two birds one stone!
An after thought! What if this is a tactic to get Israel to attack Iran in October? Change Presidents during a crisis? Even if it is a crisis of his making?
Seems that leaking is to be expected if the leaker-in-chief were a closet muslim.
Given the other leaks like details of our agent in Yemen or the eavesdropping in Pakistan I think there is a pattern that is peculiar to the Obama administration. But I agree that it is unconvincing these leaks are designed to showcase the president’s national security bonafides. I think they hurt as much as help and I notice that Barbara Boxer’s words were far too disapproving of the leaks for it just to be a political ploy by the White House. At the same time it is not as obvious as when the National Intelligence Estimate ludicrously downplayed the threat from Iran to preempt Bush having any thought of bombing their nuclear facilities. I think that was the CIA playing politics and this may be too. But it is hard to fathom what their game is. All I can think of is that perhaps all these operations are known to be blown and there is some major misdirection going on. Like when the magician waves his hand in your face and says, “See it’s empty!” On the other hand, if Obama sends in the drones to pop the centrifuges in October I’ll have to eat my hat.
Most drones don’t carry offensive payloads and have limited carrying capacity. A small missile or two is about their limit – hardly enough to stop the centrifuges.
Well, let’s start with the fact that the NYT is is an active part of Obama’s Propaganda MInistry. Knowing that, we can conclude that NYT’s masters in the White House intended for this ‘leak’ to help The One in some way.
That’s really all we need to know.
Obama threw Mubarak under the bus and people need to understand how wrong that was. Israel now faces gigantic problems with her neighbors and the possibility that America won’t support her. Be assured that these leaks were done for one reason, and one only : to help our feckless President. The result is that none of our allies will ever be able to trust us as long as Obama is president. He has done more to hurt us than any president in history.
So what, he’s sexy, to quote the 47% who are going to vote for the traitor.
I am just disgusted. Not only that they talked about other ongoing operations. Congress should find out who talked, how high this goes and hang them for treason.
A leaking White House makes perfect sense when you understand that they don’t want to face issues posed by Iran. Have no doubt, if Obama could have stopped this he would have.
Lorenz,Ya what,s up with the CIA anyway, I always knew,that the state Dept, we’re a bunch of trators, But I still remember, the CIA. Selling out the Bush Admn. On a lot of things. The National Intelligennce Estimate on Irans nucular capabilities. and then there,s the Riichard Clark,sellout. And, giving the nucular secrets to the Soviets, and the whole covering up the eastern europiean atrocities,after the war. And I m starting to realize that there are,t any good guys. ,only good intrests ….Their,s….We are all going to go down in flames.
Algernon: did you just discover punctuation?
Behind every leak is “something is happening that I find objectionable” and the leak is intended to force a stop to that activity.
If the timeline in this article is right then the Bush Administration said “we can’t allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, diplomacy won’t work, we’re not going to use force, cyber-warfare is our only alternative”. Now, the Obama Administration is saying “we can’t allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, diplomacy won’t work, we’re not going to use force, cyber-warfare is no longer an option”. It’s really all just “Smart Diplomacy”… we’re forcing Israel to attack the installations in Iran and kick start the Middle Eastern War that the “Peace Process” has kept simmering for decades.
They can keep secrets when they want to. Like Obama’s college records.
Just a crazy thought — Perhaps this is just another patch sewn into the ever-expanding crazy-quilt of Bush-did-it (fill in the blank) to (1) deflect any potential repercussions of this (formerly!) covert operation away from our responsibility-averse Prissydent and/or (2) it might provide a framework in which further smart (more like Maxwell Smart, if you ask me) diplomacy can still save the day (and the post-November job prospects of Ozymandias-on-the-Potomac)?
My advice to our current administration has always been: “Better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you the fool than to open it and remove all doubt” but it’s far too late for that. I can only imagine the laughter in the capitals of the country’s that would love to see the United States totally ruined and to think it facilitated by fellow Americans (in name only).
It’s the marxist in chief, working on his main goal in life, which is the destruction of western civilization.
But that’s really old news. Nothing surprising about that anymore. Some of us knew it BEFORE he was annointed.
What interests me is the cyber warfare itself, and I’m thinking that it is pretty close to a magic bullet. The reason is that machines today cannot operate without computers, and there is no going back either.
And here is part II: there aren’t any countries in the Middle East even close to being capable of countering sophisticated software attacks. That’s off the table. Now the Russians and Chinese have such capabilities, but all by itself, that’s a good thing since they aren’t certifiably insane, but they are still threats to our security in their own right. Even so, consider that the US has devloped the operating systems that control the world’s computers. Oh, I know there are some alternatives, but they simply don’t have the penetration necessary to make them VIABLE alternatives without decades of development. Essentially, the Iranians have to buy western equipment for the evil stuff they want to do. If they didn’t have to, they wouldn’t have. The case proves itself.
Part III of this thought process is that there are reams of secrets of nearly unfathomable complexity about those operating systems and how to penetrate them, or even, bet on this, operate totally independently of the OS that seems to be controlling the device. Stuxnet and the other one are probably the babies. The really good ones will be the programs that operate in a universe of software that the main OS isn’t even aware of. Kind of like a parallel universe.
This is making me feel pretty good, but there’s a downside, of course. I’m assuming that the US has a nearly insurmountable advantage is this arena because it’s westerners who developed these os’s in the first place. The worrisome part is the “nearly” part. No chance, ZERO chance that Iranians will ever be able to overcome “nearly”, but the Russians, or perhaps the Chinese….maybe.
I wonder if the operating systems the Chinese use to operate their new stealth planes were developed entirely separate from the major US based systems. I’ll bet the answer is no. I’ll bet they started with an existing operating system an modified it. If I’m right, it’s a huge advantage, because software with that level of sophistication takes many years to become safe to operate, and when you change it, particularly if you change it in ways to make it uniquely your own, there are huge risks that the changes will cause problems down the road. Someday, when the pilot flushes his waste out, a wing flap is gonna more in the wrong direction and cause an outage that was never encountered before because Dingbang never imagined the toilet contols and the wingflap controls share a subroutine. Boom.
Barack Hussein Obama: Real life Manchurian candidate
Are you kidding? Obama wants an excuse to use force. Americans are very hesitant to oust a President during a time of war. It’s a great distractor. Look at Clinton and the Balkans. Now look at the rhetoric out of DC these days. Suddenly it’s become much more hawkish. I predict a strike on Iran around September.
Possible. The strike would be in early to mid October though. He wouldn’t want all of the adulation to peak to far before the election.
Any strike against a target that could fight back would be out of character for a gutless wonder like Obama. If he did order one be sure it would so limited that it would achieve nothing useful, although he would claim that it had.
Or it could be a good guy disgusted with all the other leaks and deciding to get the Bush administration some credit. This sometimes happens in the classified world. After enough leaks by the bad guys, the good guys finally give in. After all, no secrets are safe anymore…
Any man who is willing to gut the military in exchange for unsustainable entitlements, is willing to destroy our intelligence secrets in order to:
1)Weaken Israel’s ability to cyber-halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, thus
2)Forcing Israel into a military option;
3)While giving the Iranians a “heads up” on how it was done…AND…blaming Bush for doing it.
In other words, they just sold out the Bush administration for devising the plan and took credit for its success…kind of like trashing the Iraq war and taking credit for its success.
The Manning/Assange theory of tearing down America as a hyper-power appeals to the first Communist President. Leaking away American might is just the right tactic for the soft overthrow.
He doesn’t mind being a satellite operative of Russia and China, he just wants those despot-run, authoritarian regimes to play along with the charade while Obama chips away at our freedoms and shreds our Constitution. Much like Jeremiah Wright, when they don’t play the role properly…President Barry the Red gets miffed, peeved and humiliated by someone exposing the truth of the situation. Putin treated Barry the Red like a useful idiot. Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.
Wiki-leaky is a feature, not a bug.
Follow the intent.
“Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.”
I doubt it. Remember in Obama’s delusional world he thinks he is the best foreign policy President ever. Chances are he will rationalize that failure the way he has everything else, as a victory and then as proof of his genius.
Has anyone noticed that the President of the US, is at the very least, mildly insane?
Obama <—– This is your brain on Chooms.
With all do respect, I think that the reason behind the leak is to stop Israel.
Stay with me. After the talks fails, Israel is at liberty to attack Iran. Obama doesn’t want this, so he’s threatening Israel by saying something like:
“I’ll leak more important and mode sensitive stuff if you dare move”.
The Dems and servant media will make the argument that retired Bush Administration officials “may have” leaked the Flame information, so………no big deal that Obama and fellow clowns “may have” leaked all the other.
According to Loftus’ book “The Secret War Against the Jews,” the USS Liberty was gathering intelligence on Israeli troop movements and armor in ’67, and sharing it with Egypt in the hopes of “brokering the peace” after a bloody stalemate. If I were the Israeli high command, I’d sure as hell have wanted it hit. Or would you have ignored the Zimmerman telegram because “gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”?
Another BS conspiracy theory cooked up by a knave in search of a sucker. A dozen investigating commissions in the US and Israel came to a remarkable conclusion, it was exactly the friendly fire incident it appeared to be.
Next week we are going to hear that the Israelis were cooperating with aliens in the attack.
These cyber-war programs began in the Bush Presidency. Was there any discontinuity, or did President Obama keep the programs fully active? When exactly, and who exactly, launched Stuxnet and the rest of the cyber/stealth attacks?
I have not been following the gritty details of the leaks fully, which seem unclear anyway. But didn’t President Obama receive a Nobel Peace Prize for, in part, promising to engage in real negotiations with rogue states like Iran? I do recall his metaphor of extending an open hand in friendship, rather than a closed fist in anger, which would lead to a rational and constructive dialogue. Be that as it may, if Obama was engaging in covert cyber warfare from the beginning of his tenure in office, that speech will go down as one of the most treacherous deceptions perpetrated by an American President. He deceived the American voters and the global community by promising a real effort at dialogue as he underhandedly waged a war of sabotage. Think about that: he extended an open hand and spoke words of reconciliation, all while clutching a knife in the other, ready to plunge it in his enemy’s back. Has their ever been a more disreputable course taken by an American President?
I would prefer a cowboy president who says “dead or alive” or an honest diplomat who did negotiate without subterfuge to the liar and deceiver to smiles while plotting the stab in the back, but that just me.
Occam’s razor:
Obama orchestrated the leak(s) to help his re-election.
Don’t give the guy credit for more intelligence than he possesses.