Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
Source: New York Times
Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: June 1, 2012
WASHINGTON From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Irans main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding Americas first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.
Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Irans Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worms escape, Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether Americas most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Irans nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.
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