Crossroads Blog | Institute National Security and Counterterrorism

Current Affairs, cyber attack

Alarm Grows In Congress, U.S. Intelligence, Over Iran’s Latin America Threat: The Daily Beast

It looks like this story is starting to get some serious media attention.  On Dec. 15th, 2011, the Daily Beast reported on the alleged Iranian-Venezuelan plot to hack into US nuclear plants and federal agencies (like the CIA).  Again, the controversy arose after Univision ran a documentary that showed Iranian and Venezuelan students being asked to hack into US networks.

This documentary has spurred a real concern about the Iranian-Venezuelan connection.  According to the article, Sen. Robert Menendez (Senate Foreign Relations Committee) will hold a hearing to examine the “threat to the United States posed by Iran's diplomatic and espionage activities in Latin America.”

When asked to comment, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez denied the Univision report…

 

Mickey-hugo"But I love the Americans, those guys are great!"


The article again quoted Sen. Menendez: “If you look at the Univision report, which overall it seemed pretty solid, it does show Iranian and Venezuelan students, asking them to hack U.S. computers and sending the information back to Caracas and Tehran,” Menendez said. “It seems these diplomats from these countries—Venezuela and Iran—are clear in their intention to see if they could get cyber passwords and information on U.S. nuclear plants. It does seem the Iranian embassy did pay for some of the students to go to Iran as well, and paid for some computers for the students.”

The source article can be found here.

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