The hacker group has destroyed more than $90 million held at an Iranian crypto exchange.
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Israel-tied Predatory Sparrow hackers are waging cyberwar on Iran’s financial system
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It's really tragic that we can't confine the conflict to the crypto bros and the spyware vendors and leave the civilians out of it.
The Israelis can purge the shady crypto guys(but I repeat myself); and the Iranians should have enough missiles to handle the NSO Group offices.
The Israelis can purge the shady crypto guys(but I repeat myself); and the Iranians should have enough missiles to handle the NSO Group offices.
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Who are they trying to fool? A homegrown Iranian cyber rebel group wouldn't keep calling its government "terrorists," the term lobbed around by Israel and the US almost exclusively. That'd be like Soviet moles going around saying "Greetings, fellow American. Gee, I sure am unsatisfied with the whore-of-capitalists in Washington!"
While I appreciate the alleged destruction of "crypto assets," whatever that means, I wish they could do it without all the war crimes and hypocrisy.
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Politics aside, and of course I have opinions, namely that I do not want ANYBODY to die, what is most concerning to me is the ongoing realization how easily large swaths of our life could be taken away, due to some off-the-leash cyber warfare.
How can security\privacy not be the number 1, 2 and 3 priority for every government and company and person on this planet?
... I bet it's because "money."
How can security\privacy not be the number 1, 2 and 3 priority for every government and company and person on this planet?
... I bet it's because "money."
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As a fella, it's like seeing Twitter posts from 'Americans' always talking about how Russia's wars have resulted in it gaining strategically-valuable warm-water ports or how the decadence of Western values have resulted in "our country" rotting.
Yes, Americans are definitely famous for their love and appreciation of warm-water ports. Totally not Russia's entire historical obsession, no, not at all. And of course everyday right-wing Americans famously don't just talk about America and assume it's most of the world, and are instead deeply attuned to widespread geographic and societal trends and talk about them in pol-sci language
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Hopefully Israel’s aggression doesn’t trigger a broader conflict. Personally, I’d like to avoid WW3 while Israel continues to ‘defend’ itself.
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Where I work, it's because of lack of money. We'd like to replace the creaking million dollar system, but it's 4th in line behind 3 other business critical million dollar systems awaiting replacement.
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Most civilians holding crypto feel like they fall into the crypto bro category or those misled by them. The sooner people realize how vulnerable crypto is to all kinds manipulation, hacking , etc, the better.
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It's apparent in the linked video that they probably could have done as much, but apparently timed the attack intentionally to avoid harming the staff.
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Two of the most murderous governments in the world are beating each other up. Pass the popcorn.
Actually, pass it to the civilians who are suffering.
Actually, pass it to the civilians who are suffering.
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Hypocritical warmongering and jingoism aside, I actually find it pretty unlikely.
- Iran is an incredibly unpopular actor on the international stage, and an even more unpopular neighbor.
- Iran's proxy networks have functionally collapsed.
- Iran's state allies have either literally collapsed (Assad) or are materially incapable of helping (Russia).
- Iran's current regime is internally unpopular
- (getting bombed is shockingly great for national unity, though.)
edit: Granted, this assumes Israel doesn't actually try to "regime change" and denuclearize Pakistan next, which is now a talking point being circulated.
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The actual home-grown resistance groups don’t mince their words when saying how they feel about the government, so it’s not that out of place.
But the name wouldn’t fool anyone, it’s just standard to translate group names into your local language. We don’t think the Islamic State is actually from Worcester just because the name is in English.
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Warm-water ports, or warm-water sports? It's all the same to TACO.
Fascinating reporting.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
While the whole thing is a Fucking Mess and recent events aren't improving that in any way, the chance of this flaring up into a conflagration between the US, Russia and / or China is pretty low. Russia is Iran adjacent but they aren't in any sort of defense pact, China probably could care less. Even if the US nuked Tehran (which it won't) it would just get everyone more pissed off at us then they are.
One thing that recent history has shown is that whatever passes for civilization these days is perfectly comfortable with a dozen small hot wars running in the midst of even more gray level conflicts.
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You’re seriously underestimating how easily regional chaos can escalate. Iran may be unpopular and internally unstable, but it still has the capacity to lash out through asymmetric warfare, disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, or provoke direct clashes with US bases and shipping. Even if its proxy network is weakened, it’s not gone — and non-state actors don’t need a strong state sponsor to cause real mayhem.
Plus, dismissing this as ‘Iraq 2.1’ ignores how exhausted the US public is with endless Middle East quagmires. Another massive intervention is far from guaranteed political or popular support. Israel’s actions — justified or not — can drag the US into cycles of retaliation and counter-retaliation that quickly involve other regional players, disrupt global oil markets, and force NATO allies to take sides diplomatically if not militarily.
So no, WW3 is unlikely — but pretending this is just another routine ‘regime change’ is naive at best and ignores how fragile global stability really is. And let’s be real: do we really trust Donald to remember which country he’s bombing? They’re all the same to him once he’s winging it on social media. Wouldn’t be the first time a Middle East policy got ‘auto-corrected’ in the wrong direction on the Signal chat.
Perhaps W3 is over stating things - but this can escalate quickly and bigger than we have the stomach for. Vietnam & Middle East conflicts ruined America. Trump said no wars - they are all getting worse under his watch.
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You’re seriously underestimating how easily regional chaos can escalate.
And here I thought I acknowledged this with "regional humanitarian crisis for the next 20 years."
Plus, dismissing this as ‘Iraq 2.1’ ignores how exhausted the US public is with endless Middle East quagmires.
Ah, yes, the exact same rhetoric I heard while we stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades. We're both exhausted and utterly incapable of not eating more chips.
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To be fair, people probably didn't think that a little known Austrian prince being assassinated by a rag tag band of incompetent anarchists would precipitate the two world wars of the last century, but look how that developed. You can't predict how these things will go.
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One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (Bismarck, 1888)
Some smart people called it in advance. The difference is that there are simply no opposing peer alliances in contest here. The greater Muslim world is not coming to Iran's aid. Iran's allies, such as they are, are not coming to Iran's aid. Iran's proxies are not coming to Iran's aid (because they've been destroyed).
I contend that Iran vs the world does not a world war make.
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Actually, only one of them is committing a genocide, killed over 50,000 people and started three wars, all within the last couple of years
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Most of the people dying in all the wars after 1920 have largely been civilians.
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The crypto is still in the ledger, the block chain, but it was essentially transferred to a nonexistent account. Since it's likely nobody has keys for the fake account, it's unlikely anything could ever be transferred out of the account.
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The US is going to "go bat shit crazy" on Iran regardless, but hitting a carrier makes for great pretext.
As for Ukraine, I'm unaware of any official NATO involvement beyond talks with the current government regarding future membership. If you mean individual sovereign states funneling material support to Iran, sure that's possible, but that just makes it another regional proxy war.
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So, in this hypothetical scenario: Iran strikes...somewhere, and a materially significant portion of the world comes to their aid?
It's not much of a world war if it's just the whole world beating up Iran.
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This was a top thought of mine as well. It's a good example of what could happen in the US should we get directly involved in something nasty. Our infrastructure is creaky enough as cyberattacks in the past several years have demonstrated. Match that up with a current administration run by utter clowns who have no idea what they're doing, and we could be in for a world of hurt.
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I despise the current Israeli government, but the most terrible government Israel ever had still has a gay man as the speaker of the house.
I can excuse the whole genocide thing, you know, because of the gay drone bombers.
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Iran is also no saint. They were deeply involved in the Syrian civil war and the Yemen civil war. Those also killed hundreds of thousands of people. Both sides are utter shit.
Hilarious.
By which I mean, gross and disgusting and delusional.
At the very start of the war, Israel started restricting food and medical supplies. When people pointed out that's a crime against humanity, they pointed to their empty field of fucks... until Biden said he might start slowing down deliveries of bombs and then they started letting aid in again. Soon as Trump came in, back to a full blockade, until it got a bit too obvious that they were going for straight-up genocide so instead they have set up aid points and just randomly send a machine-gunner to target practice on the lines of people waiting to get just enough aid to keep some of the population alive.
It's destroyed almost every building in Gaza, specifically targeting hospitals, medical clinics, and first responders.
Its leaders are openly talking about their plans to displace the population of Gaza permanently.
They make the Russians blush with the brutality. Genghis Khan would be taking notes.
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Independent of the larger political and war crimes situation, I will never care about the plight of anyone who had a computer hash they claim has value but was created out of thing air "losing" it by having it returned to thin air.
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But one Iranian missile hits an Israeli hospital, and suddenly that is a warcrime.
Nevermind the fact that the IDF has destroyed literally dozens of hospitals in Gaza since the start of their war.
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