Sheldon Adelson, the first US citizen to suffer an Iranian cyber attack, dies

One of the Bush Administration's objectives, particularly after 11 September, was to limit nuclear threats. During his second term in office, the Republican focused on putting an end to Iran's incipient nuclear programme, but the former president had already exhausted the excuse of the nuclear threat in order to launch the invasion of Iraq and could not therefore convince the international community to intervene in the country again. 

However, months before handing over to Barack Obama, a group of intelligence and military officers revealed another way of proceeding to the then president. A hitherto unexplored path, reduced only to the theft of data between states and espionage between them. In no case was it used as an offensive weapon: cyber-attacks. 

The aim of the US authorities was to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme and prevent it from progressing. To this end, the plan consisted of sending malware to the industrial control systems used by Iran at the Natanz nuclear plant. The National Security Agency (NSA) designed, in collaboration with Israeli intelligence, an effective system that penetrated the Iranians' closed network. 

Once inside, the system worked like in the spy films and the malware was able to alter the functioning of the Persian nuclear programme. The US had achieved its goal: to stop the project while making the Iranians believe that it was still in progress. 

Then came the transition. The change of power in the White House happened normally. Obama would lead the country from the Oval Office, however, the former president Bush had revealed to the democrat part of his heritage months before. 

The Republican warned him of the existence of two programmes that he should keep to, yes or no. One was the drone programme; the other, the "Olympic Games", the code name for the programme against Iran. 

As The New York Times published years later, from his first months in office, then President Obama "secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's major nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding the first sustained use of cyber weapons in the United States".

It did not take long for the Iranians to realise the deception. The month of Obama's arrival at the White House, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors visiting a nuclear plant were surprised to find that the centrifuges used to enrich uranium were failing. 

The Iranian technicians in charge of developing the project also seemed astonished, but then they did not discover the ruse. Five months later the same thing happened at the Natanz plant, but this time the experts were able to detect the cause: a malicious computer virus.

The worm virus developed by US and Israeli intelligence, now called Stuxnet, escaped from the plant itself and spread around the world. Stuxnet took control of 1,000 machines involved in the production of nuclear materials and instructed them to self-destruct.

The experts agreed: this was a breakthrough in the world of war and sabotage. It was the first time that a virus had been designed to have a direct impact on the physical world, and it was the first time that a superpower had made such aggressive use of a cyber-weapon. 

The US would never acknowledge its authorship, yet the damage was already done. The world was then entering uncharted territory and Iran would soon point out the culprit and begin its revenge. 

Three years after the beginning of the hostilities on the web, Obama began diplomatic negotiations to reduce Iranian nuclear proliferation. The refusal was categorical. And it is at this point that the figure of the tycoon enters the picture. 

In October 2013, a conference on the nuclear issue was set up. One of the speakers was Sheldon Adelson. The son of a taxi driver, Adelson had ended up building the world's largest casino and resort empire. He owned properties in Las Vegas, Macau, Singapore and other random cult capitals.

At the height of his fortune he became the eighth richest person on the planet, but by then Adelson had become one of the main financiers of the Republican Party, as well as a fervent supporter of the State of Israel. He owned a home and important conservative media that supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party.

In the 2008 election, when Obama defeated McCain, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that limited the tycoon's financial contributions after they were deemed unconstitutional violations of freedom of expression. Four years later, he gave $100 million to the Mitt Romney campaign to prevent Obama's re-election. And in 2016 he ended up being one of Trump's great supporters. 

At that conference, the billionaire advocated a forceful response from the US and threatened a nuclear attack on Tehran after being asked about nuclear tension and the negotiations initiated by Obama. "We are not playing around", he said.

Iran did not delay in echoing those statements. Weeks later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned the nation of Adelson's words and said, "Someone should kick his ass. This was the beginning of Iran's plan for double revenge. Firstly, from the Stuxnet programme and, incidentally, from Sheldon Adelson. 

The large investment in physical security would be insufficient to stop the Persian offensive. The millions spent on security cameras, guards, safes to protect tokens and money would soon become unusable. 

Spending on cyber security was, then, the great unknown. Adelson's casinos - like the vast majority of centres - were not yet protected from these threats and Persian intelligence exploited these loopholes. 

Only two months after the conference, Iranian hackers began to look for a weak point in the network of Sands Corp, the casino company owned by Adelson. In February 2014 they succeeded. The Iranians had penetrated the system with the aim of destroying it. 

Hackers wiped the hard drives and stole data from some customers during the event. To reduce the impact, employees at the complex had to shut down each computer and machine one by one. 

The casino's websites were also defaced and included images of a world map with several points on the planet in flames - points where Adelson had property - as well as images of him with the Israeli prime minister accompanied by threatening messages. The aim was to point out the tycoon and retaliate against his actions in public. 

When the event was revealed to the public after months of obscurantism by the company and the authorities, experts agreed that it was the first large-scale cyber-attack on the US corporate infrastructure. A new way of waging war had only just begun, and Sheldon Adelson was the first US citizen to suffer its consequences.