Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

The New York Times: A lengthy article in The New York Times says that the U.S. initiated a wave of cyberattacks against Iran. Citing 18 months worth of interviews with anonymous sources, the piece says that the attacks began during the Bush era, but that Obama made the decision to accelerate the attacks. The initiative, codenamed “Olympic Games,” included the release of the Stuxnet virus. The report also implicates the Israelis in Stuxnet, saying that they altered the malware code, allowing it to escape beyond the Iranian centrifuges it was meant to cripple.

The sources for the story say the recently discovered Flame malware was not part of Olympic Games; they would not say whether or not the U.S. was behind Flame. Officially, the U.S. has admitted to creating cyberweapons but not to using them.

The content of the article comes from a new book titled Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power due to hit bookstore shelves next week.