This past week, everyone has been aware of the US/Israeli war on the evil Islamic Dictatorship of Iran. The West has been in the process of destroying Iran’s war-making capabilities, from taking out its air-defenses and its nuclear industry, to the smashing of Kharg Island, its oil export facility. But a little-known cyber incident has mostly taken place in the background.

The only way I learned of this incident was that my “play-money” Roth IRA account plummeted on Thursday when the rest of the stock market was relatively flat. I noticed that my big loser that day was my stock in Stryker Corp, a maker of medical devices like joint implants, which declined in a big way. Since I bought my stock a few years ago, it has done very well for me, increasing by over 200% and racking up the reinvested dividends. It turned out that it was massively attacked by an Iranian hacking group called “Handala”. My very smart Hubby turned me on to a Web site, actually based in Ireland, called Siliconrepublic.com.

They published a story last week, Stryker’s Cork Site Hit by Global Cyberattack. The story describes an attack, based on the terrorist attacker’s belief that Stryker had attacked Iran. The company’s internal systems were all taken offline to fight the attack, and their CIO and their IT department scrambled to fix the problem.

The problem was, that the hackers, as stupid Moslems as they are, reacted with emotion like all leftists do, without having done their homework. You’d think that cyber-hackers, who spend most of their lives on the internet, would do a few minutes research to make sure they’re attacking the correct target! Well, they didn’t. It turns out that they meant to attack the Stryker Military Vehicle, an armored vehicle smaller than a tank, but on the same lines. Another minute’s research would have shown them that the vehicle is a product made by defense giant General Dynamics. Below is one.

As an aside, I also own General Dynamics stock in my play-money Roth account, and my shares are doing well too.

So, the Iranian hackers caused a huge amount of aggravation to a medical device company, who makes products that improve human health, and prolongs the useful lives of athletes and ordinary citizens; all for nought, since the war was not affected in the least, and General Dynamics continues making the Stryker for US and other troops. The hackers also erred in that there are probably NO Stryker vehicles on the ground in Iran, since so far the war has been fought primarily from the air.

And, even if they had tried to attack General Dynamics, they would probably have had a much harder time of it, since GD has a very well-known and powerful IT unit itself, that makes software for military applications, and most probably maintains heightened defenses against hacking, which the Stryker Company might not have.

I do hope the Handala hacking group gets their comeuppance soon, since they deserve to be taken down in the most humiliating way possible. Hey, Mossad, can you please get on this?