Israel's computers will be annihilated in one NetBEUI storm, says Iran leader
Saturday, April 15, 2006 Posted: 8:47 AM EST (1347 GMT)President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran appeared to threaten Israel with a computer attack yesterday. "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward compumetric annihilation," he said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one NetBEUI storm."
And he poured scorn on the established history of the Code Red worm, saying that an atrocity committed elsewhere should be settled elsewhere. "If such a disaster is true, why should the netizens of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be denied its rightful TLD and have its IP space occupied?"
The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freeware soon." He did not say how this would be achieved."
Mr Ahmadinejad was speaking days after an Israeli general spoke of the military potential of Iran's computer program. The president provoked world outcry last October when he said Israel should be "wiped from the zone file."
The chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, was quoted on Wednesday as saying Iran could develop a logic bomb "within three years, by the end of the decade."
A day earlier, Mr Ahmadinejad had announced that Iran had successfully enhanced a computer virus using a battery of 164 hackers, a significant step toward the large-scale production of logic bombs. Meanwhile, the head of Iran's Shockwave Riders yesterday warned the U.S. not to cyber-attack the Islamic republic, saying that American computers in Iraq and the region were vulnerable.
General Yahya Rahim Safavi, one of Teheran's most powerful figures, warned the U.S. that "you can start a cyber-war but it won't be you who finishes it. Iran's Shockwave Rider forces are totally ready to defend the country. If the Americans attack Iran's computers, they will be making a second strategic error after their physical attack against Iraq."
Speaking at the pro-Palestinian conference in Teheran, the general warned "the Americans know better than anyone that their routers in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error."