Cybersecurity & Tech

What Do We Do In the Aftermath of a Planned Cyberattack that is Revealed?

Herb Lin
Wednesday, February 17, 2016, 1:08 AM

David Sanger has a new story (U.S. Had Cyberattack Plan if Iran Nuclear Dispute Led to Conflict) that leaves a very important question unanswered.

Here’s the key paragraph:

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David Sanger has a new story (U.S. Had Cyberattack Plan if Iran Nuclear Dispute Led to Conflict) that leaves a very important question unanswered.

Here’s the key paragraph:

Nitro Zeus was part of an effort to assure President Obama that he had alternatives, short of a full-scale war, if Iran lashed out at the United States or its allies in the region. At its height, officials say, the planning for Nitro Zeus involved thousands of American military and intelligence personnel, spending tens of millions of dollars and placing electronic implants in Iranian computer networks to “prepare the battlefield,” in the parlance of the Pentagon.

Now that the nucelar agreement with Iran has been signed, what has become of the electronic implants that were placed to “prepare the battlefield”?

Did we tell Iran where they are? Or how to find them? I’ll bet not. Did the US erase them? That’s more likely. Or did we leave them in place? That’s more likely still.

What should we be doing with those implants? It makes a great deal of tactical sense to keep them in place. But is that a wise policy choice? I don't know.

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Herb Lin

Herb Lin

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Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

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