Thresholds crossed

Item:

New Computer Attacks Traced to Iran, Officials Say

American officials have not offered any technical evidence to back up their assertions of Iranian authorship of the latest attacks, but they describe the recent campaign as different from most attacks against American companies — particularly those from China — which quietly siphon off intellectual property for competitive purposes.

The new attacks, officials say, were devised to destroy data and manipulate the machinery that operates critical control systems, like oil pipelines. One official described them as “probes that suggest someone is looking at how to take control of these systems.”

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Jeff Moss, chief security officer at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the private body that oversees the basic design of the Internet, said: “For the last year, Iran has been focused on disrupting financial institutions’ Web sites. If they are going after energy, and opening a multiprong front, at what point does it cross from annoyance to a threshold?”

Story.

Surely we're past that point . . .