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Comment by tomdale | Hacker News Reader

It’s strange this article effectively pins the attack on Iran, but doesn’t mention Stuxnet/Olympic Games, a malware attack on Iran that destroyed nearly 1,000 of their centrifuges[1].

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/stuxn...

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I don't think an article about one thing not talking about another thing is really that strange.

Personally, I don't want Iran to develop its nuclear progam; however, there are legitimate concerns that such cyber attacks set precedent, or even could expose security flaws, that might instigate retaliatory attacks towards the US and its allies.

The article didn't just talk about the Saudi attack. It gave an overview of the history of similar attacks. Stuxnet was arguably the most significant of those, and it's especially relevant since they're blaming Iran for this attack.

They're not reporting on it, because it was done by the Good People™. They try to paint this activity as something that only Bad People™ do.

Yes. Context matters.

I came to the comments to see if anyone else was bothered by this glaring omission. The lede is that this cyber attack didn't just delete files, it caused real world physical damage.

> The attack was a dangerous escalation in international cyberwarfare, as faceless enemies demonstrated both the drive and the ability to inflict serious physical damage.

Can you reasonably call this an "escalation" after Stuxnet? Maybe? But not even mentioning Stuxnet? At best, that seems like poor reporting.

I think there is an important distinction here. See:

> It was meant to sabotage the firm’s operations and trigger an explosion.

This seems quite different than Stuxnet, which was very carefully created for a specific purpose of damaging centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in a very quiet manner, not causing explosions.

Why is that strange?

It's strange because one is seen as a retaliation and the other as preemptive aggression. Retaliation is more tolerable than preemptive aggression to many people.

It's very important in this context, because the article goes out of its way to try to point the finger to Iran, but it fails to establish the context. That it was not only attacked on its Nuclear facilities, but also had cyberattack on its oil facilities via the "Flame" malware [0]

Which if this was an Iranian attack makes it a retaliation.

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/flame-virus-hit-iran-s-oil...

>one is seen as a retaliation and the other as preemptive aggression

I don't think so. This fire has been burning for a very long time.

How is it a relaliation, which still is far from ethical, if it was to Saudi Arabia, and a non-military building at that?

> How is it a retaliation

well, there is plenty of bad blood and a history of conflict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Saudi_Arabia_relations

this is just one more event to add to the record.

But stuxnet has not been attributed to Saudis, but Israel + US, so I’m not following this chain.

saudi is a longtime ally to the us, each offering material support to ther other in conflicts that have involved iran, it's allies or it's interests.

it also seems unlikely to me that saudi intelligence and other forms of support were not utilized in the planning, development and deployment of stuxnet (among other things).

What about UK? NZ? Kurds? US has many allies, but that doesn’t mean they’re involved in stuxnet. In fact, operationally you’re more likely to fail or leak the more hands you have in the pie. Saudis aren’t known for their technological prowess as much as Israel, so none of this makes sense to me.

there's more than the context of merely being an ally, it's being a "close" ally in the region; one with a history of direct and indirect conflict.

nobody knows if saudi was involved, and i'm not saying they definitely were, but it seems rather unlikely that there was no assistance at least with regard to intelligence and other ancillary-ish things.

even so, the notion of "retaliation" in the scope of clandestine conflict and power struggle is very nebulous, as geopolitics has many layers. if nothing else, saudi is almost certainly a much more ideal target of opportunity than the US due to it's being a nearby direct competitor for regional influence. and even if saudi really had zero involvement with stuxnet (seems unlikely to me), they've definitely had allied involvement with other activities that worked against iran or it's interests.

So that’s a lot of hypothesizing going on with no evidence. But all of this begs the question, why is it strange that stuxnet wasn’t mentioned in the article? Still seems to me you haven’t answered that. If you want to extend into hypothetical land, then all kinds of attacks on industrial controls and breakins should be mentioned. But they’re not, because the article is more focused on the individual event.

it's not strange if you're fond of the narrative being shaped as being more anti-iran than a broader context would necessarily support.

media strategically omits a variety of things to support whatever messaging they're going for.

Or, another related attack by the CIA against the USSR resulting in a catastrophic natural gas explosion.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...

welcome to "how the media subtly shapes public opinion" and "editorial bias" :)

The article was already long enough as-is (I think it ran in the print edition, too). The fact that we know Israel did something similar to Iran's centrifuges is a bit far afield, since they have no apparent beef with Saudi chemical refineries.

With several countries probably able and willing to kill people with cyber-attacks, it's probably not long before an attack succeeds, blurring the distinction between cyber and "real" war.

> The article was already long enough as-is (I think it ran in the print edition, too). The fact that we know Israel did something similar to Iran's centrifuges is a bit far afield, since they have no apparent beef with Saudi chemical refineries.

From the Iranian perspective, it might be easy for them to group the USA with Israel and Saudi Arabia as quasi-enemies and not have a cared-for distinction. Especially since policies and actions by all 3 countries have been, at best, not aligned with Iranian interests and - at worst - belligerent to Iran. I really would disagree that the Stuxnet incident is irrelevant if Iran is indeed responsible.

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