Obama computer hack

At a meeting in the White House situation room within days of the Stuxnet leak, Obama asked his advisers, including Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, whether the effort should be wound up because it had been compromised.

According to sources in the room at the time, Obama asked: "Should we shut this thing down? The Natanz plant was hit twice more by versions of the worm, which damaged up to 1, high-speed centrifuges then enriching uranium.

The revelation of Obama's involvement in ordering cyber-attacks on Iran in a joint programme involving Israel follows the disclosure that Iran had recently been hit by the Flamer virus, thought to be 20 to 40 times larger than Stuxnet. According to the latest analysis of Flamer, it had a bluetooth capability never seen before in a computer worm. The computer security firm Symantec said any laptop infected with Flamer would search for other bluetooth-enabled devices, sucking up information that might include mobile phone numbers.

This would help the attacker "identify the victim's social and professional circles". The Kaspersky Lab, a Russian-based computer security firm that has studied Stuxnet and Flame, said the first Stuxnet attack on Iran took place around June , but its existence did not emerge until almost a year later, appearing to fit precisely the timeline proposed by the New York Times' sources.

Some experts have said there are sufficient similarities between the worms to suggest they have the same source. The timing of the disclosure to the New York Times's David E Sanger, who boasts of access to Obama and his closest officials, is particularly significant.

In recent weeks, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has tried to portray the Obama administration as weak and muddled on foreign policy, most recently over the crisis in Syria. In the commercial world, the three firms are well known for providing businesses with data about potential commercial partners and customers.

The open access the hackers enjoyed meant they could run their own queries about individuals via the databases of the three firms. LexisNexis issued a statement denying that its information was exposed. A spokeswoman for the FBI told Reuters it was investigating the breaches identified by Krebs but would give no more details.

Dark web drug site hit by hacker. Cracking open the corporate world. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. Previous warnings to the Chinese about cyberattacks have been brushed off. The attacks, for example, prompted U. Chinese officials listened politely and denied they had anything to do with the attacks on the campaign, the former official said.

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