The Citizen Lab - Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch: March 2013

The government is moving toward greater restrictions on the use of social media, including finding means to end the anonymity of Twitter users through the registration of personal identification. [...] The Cyber Fighters announced the launch of the “third phase of Operation Ababil,” which has almost exclusive targeted US banks, and demanding that YouTube remove all copies of the “Innocence of Muslims” video. [...] IRAN: NATO researchers; Stuxnet attack against Iran was illegal A group of NATO legal and technology experts believe that the deployment of the Stuxnet worm against Iran in 2009-2010 constituted a "cyber attack" and is considered an illegal “act of force” based on the UN charter. [...] The SEA also compromised the Twitter and Facebook accounts of the Qatar Foundation, a partly government- funded non-profit organization, and accused them of funding terrorists. [...] Although it has failed to attract Iranian users, Gholam Reza Jalali, the Director of the Passive Defence Organization, still believes [Farsi] that the government should continue to support such initiatives and enforce the ban on foreign anti-virus and other digital security products.