Israel Already at War With Iran?

Defense analysts believe Israel has beentargeting the Islamic Republic's computer networks, to gather intelligence on the nuclear program and also to launch cyber attacks against it.

"This has become a very important area in Israeli strategy, and it has to be taken into account," said Alon Ben David, an Israeli defense specialist. "It has become a more and more important element both for intelligence gathering but also for aggressive operations."

Experts believe Israeli intelligence agencies have been hacking into Iranian computer systems in an effort to disrupt or contaminate networks with viruses and malicious software.

"We came to the conclusion, for our purposes, a key Iranian vulnerability is in its online vulnerability," an unnamed recently retired member of Israel's security cabinet told the Reuters news agency. "We have acted accordingly."

The potential for hacking into foreign networks came to light over 10 years ago in Israel during a routine defense exercise. Israeli hackers managed to break into an Israeli oil and gas storage facility and officials were shocked to discover how vulnerable their computer systems had become.

Since then Israel has been upgrading defensive mechanisms against cyber attack but also developing offensive capabilities, and defense analysts believe Israel's thriving hi-tech commercial sector provides plenty of home-grown expertise.

There have been several successes, according to Ben David. "The Iranians have experienced a number of malfunctions and unexplained breakdowns, all of which point to foreign interference in the supply chain for the program."

In a far more conventional military attack in September 2007 unidentified aircraft destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert. Israel has never publicly admitted it carried out the raid.

Ben David told ABC News there was also a critical cyber warfare element in ensuring the success of the mission. He declined to talk about who had carried it out........

"Syria has one of the region's densest and best-armed air defense systems, and yet not one attacking plane was detected and not one defensive missile was ever fired," he said

SOURCE: More.

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Server in Iran compromised.
Who is launching the scan? Is it a random script kiddie or maybe a bot farm, using the Iranian server?
A sophisticated attacker may actually use some simple "script kiddie" tools first, in order to hide out in the noise of bot and kiddy probes. What computers are they taking over?
And port 5900 (VNC) appears to be the main attack method.