Obama barely got a chance to catch his breath after announcing historic talks with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, when some discouraging news came across the wires. Presumably while all this good diplomacy was going down, Iranian hackers broke into unclassified Navy computers. Oh brother.
The good news is that the US Navy doesn’t think any important information was stolen in the hack. The bad news is that, in The Wall Street Journal’s words, this was “one of the most serious infiltrations of U.S. government computer systems by Iran” that “showed a more potent Iranian hacking capability than previously believed and suggested they have the ability to access military data.”
It also comes at a sensitive time for the two countries. Obama and Rouhanio are about to engage in very very important nuclear talks that will alter the course of U.S.-Iranian diplomacy significantly. And everybody surely agrees that it would be really really positive if those talks went well.
So lay off, Iranian hackers. Are you still mad about that whole Stuxnet thing? It could’ve been worse. [WSJ]