The country that brought us Iranian nuclear assassinations, explosions at Iran missile bases, and Stuxnet, is at it again. A computer virus called Flame, is spreading among computers in the Middle East. according to an article by an expert at Kapersky Labs:
…We’ve found what might be the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed. The ‘Flame’ cyber espionage worm came to the attention of our experts at Kaspersky Lab after the UN’s International Telecommunication Union came to us for help in finding an unknown piece of malware which was deleting sensitive information across the Middle East. While searching for that code – nicknamed Wiper – we discovered a new malware codenamed Worm.Win32.Flame.
Flame shares many characteristics with notorious cyber weapons Duqu and Stuxnet: while its features are different, the geography and careful targeting of attacks coupled with the usage of specific software vulnerabilities seems to put it alongside those familiar ‘super-weapons’ currently deployed in the Middle East by unknown perpetrators. Flame can easily be described as one of the most complex threats ever discovered. It’s big and incredibly sophisticated. It pretty much redefines the notion of cyberwar and cyberespionage.
…Flame is one of the most complex threats ever discovered.
Classical Zionism decrees that Israel should be a “light unto the nations.” But Israeli cyberwarriors have taken the saying a bit too literally making Israel a “flame” unto the nations. Such a contribution Israel is making to the advancement of western civilization. It would make Herzl and Ahad HaAm proud.
My major scoop is that my senior Israeli source confirms that it is a product of Israeli cyberwarfare experts. Most such products are produced by the IDF’s Unit 8200, though the Mossad also may take some role in such projects. So add to all the previous marginally successful efforts this new one. The goal is apparently to infiltrate the computers of individuals in Iran, Israel, Palestine and elsewhere who are engaged in activities that interest Israel’s secret police including military intelligence. My source also tells me that this is the first known instance in which Israeli intelligence has used malware to intrude on Israeli citizens. Within Israel and the Palestinian territories Flame is implemented by the Shin Bet. The “beauty” of it for the secret police is that unlike “legal” eavesdropping on phones or computers, you don’t need to ask for judicial approval to infect a computer. No Israeli police officer would ever investigate a case of an Israeli computer infected with Flame since it would lead to exposing Israeli security services.
Flame appears to be the third generation of Israeli malware after Stuxnet and Duqu, which were more specifically targeted at Iranian industrial facilities, specifically its centrifuge network. It shares some capabilities with them and exploits similar vulnerabilities to gain access to targeted computers and systems (though it is 20 times larger in size). There is also some indication of similar exploits used by Stuxnet and Flame used to access host computers, which indicate they may share common authorship or have been developed by two separate groups sharing data:
Flame is a sophisticated attack toolkit, which is a lot more complex than Duqu. It is a backdoor, a Trojan, and it has worm-like features, allowing it to replicate in a local network and on removable media if it is commanded so by its master…
Once a system is infected, Flame begins a complex set of operations, including sniffing the network traffic, taking screenshots, recording audio conversations, intercepting the keyboard, and so on. All this data is available to the operators through the link to Flame’s command-and-control servers.
Later, the operators can choose to upload further modules, which expand Flame’s functionality. There are about 20 modules in total and the purpose of most of them is still being investigated.
The “innovation” of Flame is that it not only can record audio, which is a relatively rare feature of worms, it can intrude into the host in multiple ways to steal and monitor information (including recording keystrokes and taking screenshots). In this fashion it can capture IM conversations that might be otherwise encrypted. It’s what they call in baseball a “triple threat.” It also has lots of wifi features especially using Bluetooth which enable it to use the host to scan nearby electronic devices (possibly for vulnerabilities and access to them as well).
Unlike with Stuxnet, the creators of Flame obscured any possibly information that would identify when the original source was created. This would make it more difficult to track the code to its source in any specific way. Kapersky though considers the worm a creation that does not predate and says that its authors continue to refine it.
Unlike Stuxnet which was designed to sabotage Iran’s centrifuge network, Flame is not a single-focus malware:
…The creators of Flame are simply looking for any kind of intelligence – e-mails, documents, messages, discussions inside sensitive locations, pretty much everything. We have not seen any specific signs indicating a particular target such as the energy industry – making us believe it’s a complete attack toolkit designed for general cyber-espionage purposes.
However, Flame can do some of the things that Stuxnet did, so it could also be adapted for such specific uses in the event it found a convenient target. Also, unlike Stuxnet which was designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, the current worm targets individuals and organizations more than state entities:
There doesn’t seem to be any visible pattern re the kind of organizations targeted by Flame. Victims range from individuals to certain state-related organizations or educational institutions.
Flame uses at least 80 different servers and domain names to relay its data back home, so it is extremely difficult to track usage and where the information is transferred.
Kapersky notes that Flame may’ve been a companion project to Stuxnet and Duqu that was different enough from them that if the latter two were discovered, Flame could continue operating undetected:
…We believe Flame to be a parallel project, created as a fallback in case some other project is discovered.
Here is some further data on how Flame retrieves information and gleans what is useful to it from what is not:
Flame appears to be much, much more widespread than Duqu, with probably thousands of victims worldwide. The targets are also of a much wider scope, including academia, private companies, specific individuals and so on.
According to our observations, the operators of Flame…infect several dozen, then conduct analysis of the data of the victim, uninstall Flame from the systems that aren’t interesting, leaving the most important ones in place. After which they start a new series of infections.
Like Stuxnet, Flame uses USB sticks as a method of infection and has two different ways it can accomplish this. Once inside, it can take advantage of multiple vulnerabilities to gain access not just to individual computers but entire networks.
When asked why the package is so big, Kapersky responded:
Much of these [the size of Flame] are libraries designed to handle SSL traffic, SSH connections, sniffing, attack, interception of communications and so on.
The cybersecurity experts note it took them months to analyze Stuxnet. Because of its greater size it will likely take a year to do the same for the current worm.
This is an Iranian report on Flame.
UPDATE: Senior Israeli minister, Bogie Yaalon, did everything but spill the beans to Galey Tzahal (Hebrew) in answering a question about the origin of Flame:
Anyone who believes that the Iranian threat is meaningful would find it desirable to take effective means, including these, to sabotage it. Israel is blessed being a country that has tremendous technological capabilities. These tools open all sorts of possibilities for us.
Of course, this doesn’t answer the question why computers in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Russia and the U.S. were infected as well. Especially since Flame targets specific computers and does not attack in a generalized way as Stuxnet did. But any sensible person would see the benefit to Israeli intelligence targeting individuals and computer networks in these countries.
MEDIA UPDATE: The International Herald Tribune’s Rendezvous blog has linked to this post as has the Telegraph and PC Magazine.
Where is your evidence that this highly sophisticated virus was developed by Israel ? No one knows who was behind stuxnet, this is all speculations.
And since you like conspiracies so much –
Flame in Hebrew = להבה
להב”ה = לשנה הבאה בירושלים הבנויה
RE: “Where is your evidence that this highly sophisticated virus was developed by Israel ?” ~ Liron
FROM WIRED, 5/28/12:
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/flame/
FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/29/12:
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303395604577434582318857536.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
* ISRAEL: A
LightBlight Unto the Nations!™P.S. RE: “Where is your evidence that this highly sophisticated virus was developed by Israel ?” ~ Liron
AND RE: “the majority of its customers who have been hit by the malware reside in the Palestinian West Bank, Hungary, Iran and Lebanon. [NOTE THE ABSENCE OF ISRAEL – J.L.D.]” ~ from my post above
SEE: With New Malware Virus, Israel Fans a Virtual Flame Against Iran, by Pierre Klochendler, Inter Press Service, 5/31/12
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/31
P.S. THE ROGUE, DISSOCIATIVE* STATE OF ISRAEL: A
LightBlight Unto the Nations!™* Dissociation (psychology) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)
RE: “Where is your evidence that this highly sophisticated virus was developed by Israel ?” ~ Liron
SEE: “Obama’s kosher cowboys”, by Ira Glunts, Mondoweiss, 6/02/12
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/obamas-kosher-cowboys.html
P.S. U.S./ISRAEL: A
LightBlight Unto the Nations!™FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/29/12: (excerpt) “…U.S. officials draw a distinction between cyber espionage and cyberattacks, which have a destructive or manipulative purpose and could be considered an act of war. . .”
RE: “Where is your evidence that this highly sophisticated virus was developed by Israel ?” ~ Liron
SEE: High Israeli official hints, We made the Flame virus, by Ira Glunts, Mondoweiss, 5/30/12
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/05/high-israeli-official-hints-we-made-the-flame-virus.html
Yaalon’s words were right there in my friggin’ post as well. Some people can’t read.
By the way, Liron sends you all his regards from the Hasbara Retirement Home where I’ve sent him for some R&R after I banned him for racism. Here was his fond farewell:
Ouch!
LOL, you do deprive of some of the more colourful characters, when you ban these fruitcakes, Richard.
Yup, that’s a reproach 🙂 Anyone agree? lol
RE: “Liron sends you all his regards from the Hasbara Retirement Home where I’ve sent him for some R&R after I banned him for racism.” ~ R.S.
REPLY: I’m terribly saddened to hear of his misfortune. Please assure him that I’ll be certain to mention him in my nightly prayers. Perhaps that will be of some consolation.
If you wish to do a mitzvah you may visit him in the home & tell him how much he’s missed here. Once he’s recovered from his trauma if he ever does, he’ll be welcome back.
A Light Unto the Nations, Richard.
RE: “Flame: Israel’s New Contribution to Middle East Cyberwar”
ISRAEL: A
LightBlight Unto the Nations!™I do loathe Israel’s policies, even question its legitimacy in its current configuration, but one has to admit that — facing the spectre of a nuclear threat — cyberwar’s close to the benign end of warfare spectrum.
What nuclear threat? suppose Iran had three (3) atomic bombs that could be delivered by rockets. How would that threaten Israel, which has hundreds on (some sort of ) nukes and submarines for second-strike (or first-strike, come to that) capability.
Again, what nuclear threat?
Of course, this doesn’t answer the question why computers in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Russia and the U.S. were infected as well. Especially since Flame targets specific computers and does not attack in a generalized way as Stuxnet did.
Bogie Yalon may have just been bragging,
I have the feeling that Israel may not be behind Flame. Surely it was already spying on it’s own ‘problematic’ citizens? The extremists must have already been under surveillance..
How do we know that it’s not the US behind it, spying on both Israel and Iran?
That was the question in my mind, well at least till before I read Richard’s report, which has an Israeli source confirming that Israel was behind Flame,
It’s worth bearing in mind, that if indeed it was the US or someone else (Russia perhaps? or China?) targeting the Middle East, including Israel, then Israel would not want that made public.
Richard’s source may have been acting on it’s own bosses recommendation to spread misinformation to the media. ie. claim that Israel is behind it.
It may or may not be. Time will tell. It may even be Iran herself.
Interesting Richard. But if I were the Irainians I would not be using Microsoft Windows OS PC’s anywhere near important systems, period. Unix has been, and continues to be, the only truely stable and secure Operating System. And with Open-Source Linux now with Graphical User Interface’s as easy to use as Windows, why???
It may be that some are compelled to use Windows because of other hardware or software they’re using. This was the case with the machinery at the Iranian nuclear plant which was operated in part by Windows systems. But overall I really don’t know the answer. But your question makes perfect sense. I’m guessing that national IT folks around the world are beginning to ask just that question & Linux has become a much more attractive OS as of yesterday.
Israel is part of Western Civilization since…? Israelis are either Semitic or they are not — choose please. While diaspora Jews may call an American colony on stolen land a “homeland”, this does not make that stolen land magically part of the geographic West.
Indisputably, the term “civilization” does not apply to Israel.
It is now being said that Flame is up to five years older than Stuxnet.
20Mbytes would need a really swift broadband connection to arrive unnoticed over the net, so USB sticks probably the only way -at least until broadband speeds make 20Mbytes less noticeable.
I wouldn’t bet on UNIX or Linnux being completely proof against anyone as careful and methodical as the creators of Flame.
If this is an example of what Israeli computer experts can do, a Japanese cyber espionage tool would be something to behold.
Sooner or later, someone is going to comment that the American cyber espionage tool is codenamed “Facebook”.
It could be that classic Zionism was misquoted and that the really meant ‘ Israel shall be alight to all nations’
Il y a une grande difference.
Richard,
It’s ironic that the IHT’s blog Rendezvous would source and link to you, i’d have expected Haaretz to get there first 🙂
Haaretz and the IHT and NYT are owned by the same parent company.
Not quite. Haaretz has a distribution arrangement with IHT (not the NYT). NYT owns IHT. Neither owns Haaretz which is owned by the Schocken family and a German entrepreneur.
Amos Schocken pretty much can’t stand my guts. So while every Israeli newspaper (even the right wing ones) has profiled me in major articles. Haaretz never has. Once in a Blue Moon a reporter who hasn’t gotten the corporate memo will refer to me. I’m tolerated if that.
Thanks, very interesting. I’m surprised tohear that Amos Schocken has it in for you. I’d have thought he’d like you.
He’s a liberal Zionist. Besides I’ve written critically of a few of his reporters and their coverage. He has thin skin.
LOL,
As a publisher, that is a major sin.
A publisher ruins his reputation if he cannot take criticism.
Iran ‘finds fix’ for sophisticated Flame malware
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18253331
Iran says it has developed tools that can defend against the sophisticated cyber attack tool known as Flame.
The country is believed to have been hit hard by the malicious programme which infiltrates networks in order to steal sensitive data.
Security companies said Flame, named after one of its attack modules, is one of the most complex threats ever seen.
Iran says its home-grown defence could both spot when Flame is present and clean up infected PCs.
There is so much disinformation regarding Flame, it is hard to tell anything based on newspaper reports anymore.
For instance, Chayma, wouldn’t you suppose that Iran would be vigilant against, particularly, cyber threats given their Stuxnet experience? When they were infected with Stuxnet, the story goes, an Iranian technician just happened to get an error on his laptop, and went home to diagnose it by plugging it into the internet (strictly against one of the most well-known protocols for a nuclear personnel). This is why Stuxnet was such a disaster, as we are told. However, logically again, reading through the lines, it becomes more apparent that once Iran realized it had a virus of this magnitude, it decided to unleash it. This showed Israel strategically that anything Israel did to inhibit Iran’s nuclear right to civilian enrichment would doubly hurt Israel.
Now, we have Flame. The virus acts like a reconnaissance tool rather than one intended to destroy whatever it finds. This would seem likely for an Israel that actually believed Iran is a nuclear threat. If you think that Israel’s leadership really think this, then keep reading BBC respectfully. However, Israel does not believe Iran to be that kind of threat at all. So, who would be more motivated to simply gather information on behavior?
Iran has a strict information security protocol following Stuxnet. Again, it would be silly to think that the Iranians would even make electronically accessible to a virus from outside networks anything that is crucial to them knowing the data stream is a used method of attack.
Yawn. Flame is mostly a product of Israeli Psy Ops. Israel planted the whole story. Trying to paint the Israeli IDF as a big scary dragon, capable of felling whole countries with a twitch of his finger. And I’ll prove I’m right–the fake Flame balloon was released two days after Israel grudgingly watched while the West let Iran off the hook.
And the IDF did NOT attack Iran. Folded totally. Because the IDF knows it is HOPELESSLY incapable of attacking Iran.
So, in order to maintain the myth of IDF world supremacy, this fiction was concocted. For all I know they had their spies import the ‘infected’ computers and turn them in to the security companies.
And what’s the threat — that Israel knows some of Iran’s emails? Any idiot can correctly guess what Iran is up to. Including Israel. And that does NOT include building a bomb and blowing up Israel.
Israel is just desperately trying to maintain the myth, so that Bibi’s cronies can keep robbing the poor in this country. Your Fisher blood-sucking vampire representative is now trying to add 17% VAT to vegetables. The most regressive possible tax, causing misery to the poor and unnoticed to the rich. That’s the real action.
So go to Shul and grunt ‘Heh heh’ when they say maybe Israel created Flame. Feel better now, American?
If you want to spew intolerance & hate everywhere you go, be my guest. But not here. Treat others with respect or you’ll get none from me. Besides the only “grunting” I’ve heard is the sound & tone of your own comment.
If you go to symantec’s web site you’ll see a Big Scary Front Page telling us all how terribly, terribly scary Flame is.
But if you go to http://www.sarc.com and follow the links to “security threats” you’ll see what the technical folk at symantec really think about the threat posed by Flame…..
Wild Level = Low
Geographical Distribution = Low
Threat Containment = Easy
Removal = Easy
Odd, isn’t it, how the headlines don’t seem to match the nitty-gritty.
Thanks for this, Richard.
I had first read about it yesterday:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/05/30/243741/israel-hints-it-made-malware-flame/
Describing the Flame virus as complex and novel is like saying Anonymous is a “hacker” group.
Nerds with sufficient knowledge everywhere laughing at these fairy tales. I just want to know who makes this stuff up? Do they laugh at the public reaction as well?
Trojan viruses have existed since before dial up BBSes where the top Israeli “security experts” used to play text based games while chatting about all things nerd and sometimes illegal. The complexity here isn’t anything great or severe – the very same has already been accomplished without Flame (turning on your webcam, recording, even while computer appears off, etc.) It requires simply a program that manifests itself in the operating system without detection and to cue several processes or functions within the operating system already available. Further, firmware can be flashed to take it one notch higher. You have to include all the available contingencies into the program.
Given the reporting features of the bug, there also have to be steps taken to remove from hazard the ability to be traced. This can be done through logistics rather than code, or a combination thereof.
And let’s put it this way: if it’s effective, you have no basis to continue the fabricated threat charade. Such a stupid gambit by Israel, but not surprising.
It’s notable that the most sensitive documents in British government circles are hand-written and kept in thin steel boxes and this has been the case for many years.
They’ve known not to trust typewriters since the 1890s, they’ve known not to trust enciphered telegrams since 1917, and from 1943 onwards, they’ve known not to trust any form of electronic encryption. In the fifties they found they could extract useful information (though not a complete decrypt) even from communications traffic coded with one-time pads. In the early seventies, people working at GCHQ discovered the mathematical equations later stumbled upon by the inventors of “PGP” and, very tellingly, this format has never, ever, been used to encrypt an official UK government communication.
The lesson from the work of Commander De Grey in the first world war and a much larger number of equally talented people in the second, is that the “cyber” war can only be lost and it’s inherently impossible to keep any document secret by encryption.
But, actually, if you approach the matter from the other end: the physical laws of the universe, and the essential (to physicists) principle of reversibility, an impossibility of keeping a secret is what you’d expect. Even the handwritten letter in the locked box, is only secure in terms of our currently-available technology: there is no reason fundamental to the laws of the universe why such a document cannot be reconstructed. Because as long as it’s possible for everything that happens to “unhappen”, that means the information necessary to do that remains present in the universe in some form.
The Bible says, in several places, that every secret will be known, and this is consistent with the more-headache-making laws of physics.
Expect the politicians, especially in America and Russia, to spend an awful lot of money trying to find a way round this. In the long run, it can’t be done. According to our present state of knowledge, if it could be done, the universe couldn’t exist, or it could only exist in an unchanging state which would amount to non-existence.
If you read Peter Wright’s book “Spycatcher” with this in mind, then the chapters touching on the subject of “Venona” (the analysis of supposedly completely random one-time-pad traffic) describe this theory becoming practical reality. Ironically enough, this is the most important of Mrs Thatcher’s triggers for attempting to suppress publication of the book.
Flame: Israel rejects link to malware cyber-attack
Israel has dismissed suggestions that it might be behind the Flame cyber-attack.
Several media reports linked comments made by the country’s vice prime minister with the malware, which has infected more than 600 targets.
However, a spokesman for the Israeli government told the BBC that Moshe Ya’alon had been misrepresented.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18277555
Bob Mann, thanks for this. Though of course, Yaalon denying it is just as meaningless as him hinting/confirming through a source, that Israel was behind it.
I thought as much. I am certain, Israel is not behind this. I think this time it was the US, it wouild be very remiss of the CIA not to be keeping a close watch on Israel.
After the Iraq war went wrong, some of the top intelligence men recommended not trusting Israeli intelligence in future. If you recall, The Office of Special Projects during Sharons time, was said to have fabricated the evidence.
Moreover, what differed here was that Israel itself was a target too.
Researchers have discovered that the Duqu virus, which according to cyber experts was developed by a team working for the same nation that developed Stuxnet & Flame, was only worked on during daily work/office hours Jerusalem time and that the authors also observed Shabbat by not working during Shabbat. Apparently the files of these worms contain documentation of the times of days & days of the week in which coding was done. This was published in yesterday’s NY Times.
So much for your silly claim that this is the work of Americans, unless of course they were Americans working in Israel in collaboration with the Israelis.
Richard, some experts think that the FLAME creators spoofed it’s creation timestamps to make it look like it was built by the same team as Stuxnet.
I think the US is behind it, but it may well be another nation, like China or Russia if it isn’t Israel.
————-
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227580/Development_timeline_key_to_linking_Stuxnet_Flame_malware
Those earlier dates have not been confirmed by either Kaspersky or Symantec, however, in part because Flame spoofs its file creation and code compilation time and date stamps.
Chronology is important because of the Windows vulnerabilities that both Stuxnet and Flame exploited.
————-
But if the timelines are such that it looks like Flame was created after the bugs exploited by Stuxnet went public, well, then all bets are off: The Flame team could have simply used what had been disclosed to make their own exploits of the vulnerabilities, standing on the shoulders of Stuxnet.
“We’re going to have to spend a lot of time analyzing Flame before we know for certain,” said O Murchu.
Kaspersky and Symantec have pledged to publish more information about Flame as they find it.
“It’s official: US and Israel created Stuxnet, then lost control of it”
https://twitter.com/ibnezra/status/208511949959462913
I read someone mentioning that the leak to NYT had come from within the Obama-administration in order for Obama to be taken in from the cold by the Israeli lobby.
Deir,
Thanks for this.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t say that Stuxnet and FLAME are created by the same team. No official verification anywhere yet.
So you don’t believe NYTS’ John Markoff nor David Sanger quoting U.S. govt sources saying Stuxnet was a joint cyberwar venture? And you’re waiting for “official” (whatever that means) word? I’ll ask them to send you an engraved invitation to the official announcement.
Richard yes, but I wasn’t talking about Stuxnet, I was talking about FLAME probably not being a joint US/Israeli venture. (my own opinion)
That Stuxnet was a joint US/Israeli venture wasn’t the issue here, and I think that was already known, before FLAME came out.
There is an assumption that because Stuxnet was a joint US/Israeli venture, so FLAME must be too.
If FLAME has false dates and times programmed in (see Compterworld link I posted above) to show where it was created, then the next logical question would be to question why.
Because Stuxnet & Duqu involved the Idf’s Unit 8200, if not the U.S. as well, Flame likely does as well. Not to mention my source confirmed it.
Richard, David Sanger’s piece in the NYT said:
A similar process is now under way to figure out the origins of another cyberweapon called Flame that was recently discovered to have attacked the computers of Iranian officials, sweeping up information from those machines. But the computer code appears to be at least five years old, and American officials say that it was not part of Olympic Games. They have declined to say whether the United States was responsible for the Flame attack.
Whilst this piece makes clear there was Israeli/US collaberation on Stuxnet, it could also lend support to the theory that I vocalised. FLAME could have been a separate US project to monitor Israel and Iran and probably others too.
No, articles by Kaspersky cyber experts & others make clear that while Stuxnet & Duqu were likely not created by the same coders who wrote Flame, they were likely created by two groups working in tandem. All of them had certain general tecnical approaches in common & came out of the same system. My source KNOWS. He’s right. You’re not. You’re speculating. He’s not.
“My source knows. You’re not.” Not a word about the findings of the last two days (flame is an American code that was developed by the order of the white house). Not a single word. Surprising? Hmmm… Not really.
I’ve been reading every credible source I can about Flame & never read anything remotely close to the nonsense you’re spouting. A credible source…do you have one?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
is it a credible source or should we need to rely on your anonymous credible source??
The article very explicitly does NOT say Flame is a U.S. product. It says Stuxnet & Duqu were joint Israeli-U.S. products. It never ceases to amaze me how my right wing “readers” can’t read.
Flame is an Israeli product. If there was American collaboration no credible proof has yet been offered.
David Sanger in NYT, relying on White House sources, says Stuxnet was the joint work of U.S. (NSA, with White House approval) and Israeli intelligence. Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran:
Hi Richard,
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We have reprinted this article and attributed you properly. Please let us know if you mind this whatsoever. We welcome your visit to the site and hope that you can help to foster a positive dialogue there.
At the moment, the site is very nascent. It will need some time before “the people” arrive. 😉
Cheers!
http://www.operationredpill.com
I don’t know your site and can’t say whether I approve or disapprove of being published there. But I prefer to be asked BEFORE you republish and not AFTER. Asking me after you’ve already done it is wrong.
Hi Richard,
We properly attributed you and if you would prefer us not to feature your articles, you are quite welcome to request that we do take down your articles. Our site features authors from all paths. The key concept is to engage in a discussion of ALL ideas and to venture disputes from an open-minded, intellectual prism.
Please keep in mind that we did more than a hat tip your way (as opposed to others who just simply steal what you write without proper attribution).
At the very least I would prefer not to be labelled as a “Contributor” on your site. That makes it appear that I have a formal affiliation with your site that I do not have.
Yes, we are preparing a disclaimer to let people know we are an arena for ideas. Thus, your ideas will be in stark contrast with our other sources of ideas.
We will adjust the title to suit your concern (this was a consequence of our website coding and not necessarily a purposeful action) and shoot you an e-mail so you have a point of contact.
Cheers!
That site operationredpill.com appears to be an aggregation of news from various places, no original content, though I havn’t checked every page.
There isn’t even an ‘about’ page. Notice how the person above didn’t clarify who ‘we’ are.
I think this website, Tikkun Olam, is one of the best for Israeli news and certainly the best in the USA. Of course one may not agree with everything written here, but it has has original news not found elsewhere, with superb sources.
The other site with the same name run by Rabbi Lerner is a good one too.
The site has syndicated contributors as well as original content. It is two days old.
OperationRedPill is not meant to compete with this site whatsoever or other sites. Rather, we will be driving traffic to Richard’s site if he chooses to engage in our open discussion environment.
“About Us” – we are anonymous because the truth is dangerous to you.