Stuxnet Two?

The New York Times is reporting that a cyberattack against Iran in June took out a database used by Iran’s paramilitary arm used to plot attacks against oil tankers. The attack also degraded Tehran’s ability to target shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, and Iran is still trying to recover information destroyed in the June 20 attack and get back online.

This attack came right around the time that Iran shot down a U.S. drone, a retaliatory attack for which the Trump Administration called off at the eleventh hour.

MIT Review reports the attack has had a lingering impact on the Iranian military’s ability to target oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and noted the database wiped out belong to Iran’s paramilitary forces known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

U.S. officials said there has been no escalation from Iran, but the Times reports there have been doubts about whether the benefits of the operation outweighed the cost — “lost intelligence and lost access to a critical network used by the Guard.”

The entire episode is reminiscent of Stuxnet, a cyber operation thought to be developed by the U.S. and Israel that targeted and destroyed controller systems for centrifuges in Iran’s uranium enrichment program — only this time at a much faster pace. 

IBM Acquires Guardium

In the most unclosed guarded super top secret acquisition of 2009, IBM has officially announced it has acquired Guardium, a market leader in real-time enterprise database monitoring and protection.

(I kid, because I started hearing about this acquisition in the blogosphere before Thanksgiving).

Guardium’s technology helps clients safeguard data, monitor database activity, and reduce operational costs by automating regulatory compliance tasks.

Guardium is a privately held company based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

You can read more details about the deal here.

This acquisition builds on IBM’s business analytics strategy, including the range of offerings available through IBM’s recently-announced Business Analytics and Optimization Consulting organization, which includes 4,000 consultants, a network of analytics solutions centers, and an overall investment of more than $12B U.S. in organic growth and acquisitions.

IBM will integrate Guardium within IBM’s Information Management Software portfolio , which has more than 35,000 experts dedicated to helping clients use information as a strategic asset to transform their business.

This marks the 28th acquisition to support IBM’s Information Management strategy.