Of course, if you'd like any real details on what Tehran is planning on doing about any of this, good luck.

Iran is planning to sue Hollywood over the Oscar-winning "Argo" because of the movie's allegedly "unrealistic portrayal" of the country, Iranian media reported Tuesday. Several news outlets, including the pro-reform Shargh daily, said French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre is in Iran for talks with officials over how and where to file the lawsuit. She is also the lawyer for notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal.

Look, it's not that the jet doesn't look pretty sweet flying over Mount Damavand, it's just that if the majority world opinion is that your country is still using Russian war technology because you can't build working models on your own, an easily-discovered photoshop of your plane... you know... actually flying probably isn't going to impress anyone. Put some effort into it, guys. At least figure out a way to alter the cloud formations, so they aren't identical.

The first shot was probably the release of Stuxnet sometime during or before 2009. Even though no one has officially claimed responsibility everyone knows who was behind it. Stuxnet hit with a bang and did a whole lot of damage to Iran's uranium-enrichment capabilities. The United States followed that up with Flame–the ebola virus of spyware.

What did the Iranians fire back with? A series of massive, on-going and ineffective DDoS attacks on American banks. This is a disproportionate response but not in the way military experts usually mean that phrase. It's the equivalent of someone stealing your car and you throwing an ever-increasing number of eggs at his house in response.

ProPublica reported yesterday that a widely cited Defense Department study claiming Iran's Intelligence Ministry constitutes "a terror and assassination force 30,000 strong" has been "pulled for revisions." It seems there's no proof whatsoever that the 30,000 number wasn't pulled out of thin air.

• Mars One is now looking for people willing to become astronauts, train for 8 years, and go on a ONE-WAY trip to Mars (and also be part of this globally-televised mission). The first team to go will be democratically elected from six teams of four astronauts, and the launch is scheduled for September 2022. [url]
• Iran is planning to launch a monkey into space sometime in February 2013. Iran has a goal of sending a human into space by 2020 and putting someone on the moon by 2025. (And Iran has already sent a rat, two turtles and a worm into space.) [url]
• MRI scans of astronauts who spent over a month in space show that long term exposure to microgravity can damage eyeballs and parts of the brain. The problems are similar to having intracranial hypertension -- where the brain experiences pressures that press it against the skull and eye sockets. [url]
• A simulated 520-day mission to Mars found that astronauts may need to keep Earth-like schedules or else they'll have trouble sleeping and possibly acquire some mood disorders. This ground-based study will affect plans for manned Mars missions, and it could also have implications for people who live with disrupted sleep and prolonged exposure to artificial lighting. [url]

Iran's latest move is a useful reminder that wherever they are used, ID cards or their equivalent can become powerful enabling tools for perfect online surveillance. Other oppressive regimes will doubtless be watching the Iran experience closely.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Then, on October 4, 2012, the IFC began preventing files hosted on servers outside Iran from entering the country by blocking specific file extensions. At the time of writing, this policy applies to all MP3, MP4, AVI and SWF files. This kind of filtering was used after the controversial presidential elections of 2009, amidst harsh crackdowns on freedom of information, and coincides with Iran's current economic crisis and the ensuing protests.

Regardless of whether or not the block on Gmail was intentional, the obstruction to one of the world’s most popular email services resulted in many complaints from Iran officials. Legislator Hossein Garousi reportedly threatened to summon Iran’s telecommunications minister Reza Taqipour for parliamentary questioning if the service was not unblocked.

Iran continues to block any site or network that expresses “anti-government views,” including sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which helped rally citizens and circularize the massive protests following the questionable re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Even though YouTube was previously blocked in Iran before the film was released and Gmail access was barred, Reuters reports on the ability of Iranian citizens to “circumvent Internet restrictions” using virtual private network (VPN) software, which makes it appear as if the computer accessing the content is located in another country.

"I want you!!! ...to enjoy the Mists of Pandaria Persian-free."

Last week, a user claiming to be from Iran posted on an official World of Warcraft forum to report that the game was inaccessible. A Blizzard employee responded to the thread on Saturday, writing that "United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran."

"This week, Blizzard tightened up its procedures to ensure compliance with these laws, and players connecting from the affected nations are restricted from access to Blizzard games and services," the employee said.

You can have your rials back when you pry them from our cold dead fingers...
Image source. CC BY 2.0

The provision of standard IT equipment to the IP offices of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Islamic Republic of Iran that occurred in the preceding years, within the context of the Organization’s business modernization program for IP Offices in developing countries, is being referred to the relevant UN Sanctions Committees for their information and guidance.

The initial steps are being undertaken for a full external and independent review of the technical assistance provided to countries subject to UN sanctions.

A new internal instruction has been issued ending any provision of IT hardware in any of WIPO’s technical assistance programs.

“There’s a relatively small number of countries who benefit from hardware as opposed to our complete software package,” Gurry said. “And since certain member states perceive that there is some ambiguity in the use of standard IT equipment – printers, cartridges, PCs and servers – we think the only complete answer we can give because of their perception of ambiguity is to say, we no longer do that.”

“We can argue for hours and hours and hours about the legal interpretation, that it’s only a few PCs, and so on,” he said. “But if there’s lingering doubt, let's eliminate it.”

Geneva-based WIPO has a mandate from members to help developing countries modernize their patent offices. Iran and North Korea, both subjects of international trade embargoes including Security Council resolutions, were both beneficiaries of “standard information-technology equipment” after meeting WIPO’s needs-assessment and validation procedures, according to Edward Kwakwa, legal counsel at the organization.

I would suggest we go ahead ONLY if you think this arrangement is of crucial importance to WIPO. But given the sensitivities and the broad sweep of the sanctions language, I would prefer that WIPO simply desist from entering into any such arrangement, as it does not seem to be of any consequence or benefit to WIPO, and can bring more trouble than benefit ultimately.

"My idea was simple, I was trying to reach the other side. There are all these talks about war, Iran is coming to bomb us and we bomb them back, we are sitting and waiting. I wanted to say the simple words that this war is crazy," said Edry.

Now if you're cynical, or you watch too much cable news, you might be wondering what the big deal is. So an Israeli made some posters and put them on Facebook. So what?

The response, said Edry, was overwhelming. "In a few hours, I had hundreds of shares and thousands of likes and it was like something was happening.

"I think it's really amazing that someone from Iran poked me and said 'Hello, I'm from Iran, I saw your "poster" on Facebook,' " Edry said.

And that's when the posters created by Iranian citizens in return began flooding in. Posters with messages of peace and commonality. I found one particular post on Edry's Facebook page from an Iranian to be particularly heartening:

We share a common history, have been sharing both our great and ancient cultures, languages and poetry together. ... We are so similar, and politicians cannot cut a tie that has been tied thousands of years ago. I am proud to have you as my friends.

I'm not going to go all peace, love and flower power on you, but this is why the internet age is so important. It's also why cutting off communication between nations, or allowing even the first steps of internet censorship to take hold, must be stopped at all costs. It's not just about copyright, or flash mobs, or YouTube videos showing Spaceballs clips. The internet is ultimately about people sharing with one another, whether they're sharing thoughts, images like this, or whatever. It's about commonality. It's about creating a web of bonds through which communication and understanding can flow.

And now, I'm realizing, it's about giving every man and woman the power to do what their blowhard, acrimonious politicians won't do: talk to one another.

• China
• Iran
• United Arab Emirates
• Armenia
• Ethiopia
• Saudi Arabia
• Yemen
• Bahrain
• Burma (Myanmar)
• Syria
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan
• Vietnam

“Based on the law, the use of VPNs or other antifiltering software is forbidden and considered a crime,”

While Diginotar revoked the other rogue certificates, they missed the one issued to Google. Didn't Diginotar think it's a tad weird that Google would suddenly renew their SSL certificate, and decide to do it with a mid-sized Dutch CA, of all places? And when Diginotar was auditing their systems after the breach, how on earth did they miss the Iranian defacement discussed above?

As the problems with the certificate authority system become clear, lots of people are working on ways to detect and mitigate these attacks. Chrome's pinning feature is available not only to Google web sites but to any webmaster; if you run an HTTPS site, you can contact the Chrome developers and get your site's keys hard-coded. Other browser vendors may implement a similar feature soon. The same result could also be achieved by giving web sites themselves a way to tell browsers what certificates to anticipate—and efforts to do this are now underway, building on top of DNSSEC or HSTS. Then browsers could simply not believe conflicting information, or at least provide a meaningful way to report it or warn the user about the situation.

[U.S. President Barack] Obama admitted several times, in Congress and elsewhere, that the cyberwars he has carried out against us have not succeeded. He has admitted defeat. We had foreseen in advance the steps they are taking in cyberspace -- for example, the 'Internet in a Suitcase' that they have hyped so much -- and we have ways to counter it," Moslehi said in an interview with Iranian state television.

Army Commander Ahmadreza Pourdastan has said that the Iranian Army is adequately prepared to counter any possible cyber threats against the Islamic Republic.

"Iranian armed forces are capable of carrying out offensive and defensive cyber operations," Brigadier General Pourdastan told the Mehr News Agency on Saturday. "The Army is fully prepared to defend the country against cyber attacks," he said. "We are not afraid that other countries are turning to (strategies and tactics of) cyber war because we are also familiar with cyberspace."