DUBAI - Iran was investigating a suspected cyber attack on its main oil export terminal and on the Oil Ministry itself, Iranian industry sources said on Monday. 

A virus was detected inside the control systems of Kharg Island, the country's largest crude oil export facility, but the terminal remained operational, a source at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) told Reuters. 

Officials said the attack had not corrupted vital information at NIOC, although it had damaged general information, an oil ministry official told the semi-official Fars news agency, which has some ties to the government. 

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"This cyber attack has not damaged the main data of the oil ministry and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) since the general servers are separate from the main servers, even their cables are not linked to each other and are not linked to internet service," Alireza Nikzad told the agency.

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The virus, which is likely to be compared to the Stuxnet computer worm which reportedly affected Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009-10, struck late on Sunday, Reuters reported. 

It hit the internet and communications systems of Iran's Oil Ministry and of its national oil company, the Mehr news agency -- which calls itself "private and non-official media"-- reported. Computer systems controlling a number of Iran's other oil facilities have been disconnected from the Internet as a precaution, the agency added. 

Hamdullah Mohammadnejad, the head of civil defense at the oil ministry, was reported as saying Iranian authorities had set up a crisis unit and were working out how to neutralize the attacks. 

IT systems at the oil ministry and at the national oil company were also disconnected to prevent the spread of any virus, the Mehr news agency said. 

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The oil ministry's own media network, Shana, quoted a spokesman as saying no major damage had been sustained. 

Iran's nuclear program is thought to be the principal target of the Stuxnet worm -- discovered in 2010 -- the first virus believed to have been specifically designed to subvert industrial systems. 

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U.S.-based think-tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), said that in late 2009 or early 2010 about 1,000 centrifuges -- machines used to refine uranium - out of the 9,000 used at Iran's Natanz enrichment plant, had been knocked out by the virus -- not enough to seriously harm its operations. 

Iran also identified damage inflicted by a similar virus aimed at disrupting industrial processes, called Duqu. Experts say Duqu appears to be designed to gather data to make it easier to launch future attacks and that very few organizations could have written such complex programs. 

Most of the world's oil facilities are controlled by computers, but some processes can be controlled manually when necessary. A shipping source with knowledge of operations at Kharg Island said that NIOC has been prevented from sending out the crude loading program at the terminal.   

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Artist and activist Ai Weiwei turned off four live webcams in his home late Wednesday after Chinese authorities ordered him to take them down. The live stream had been viewed around 5.2 million times in two days, he told NBC News.

Ai had launched the live video at weiweicam.com on April 3, the one-year anniversary of his detention at Beijing's international airport. He was held for three months during a crackdown on dissent and was subsequently fined 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) for alleged tax evasion, which he denies.

"I wanted them to see me on the first anniversary of my detention," Ai told NBC News in a phone interview on Thursday. "I'm still under surveillance from the public security."

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Chinese authorities called him and said they "noticed I put something out on the Internet," and said they hoped he would take it down, Ai told NBC.

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"And I asked them, 'Is that an order?' And they said 'Yes, it's an order,'" Ai said.

He was not given a reason for the order, The Guardian newspaper reported.

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Despite having to turn off the live stream, Ai said he had still sent out a message.

"It's about power and individual creativity and about the Internet and about the privacy. You know, this issue about intruding into other people's privacy."

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LONDON - Rapidly increasing global ownership of smartphones and tablets will expose consumers and governments to much higher risks of Internet fraud and hacking, according to an expert.

Martin Sadler, director of the Cloud and Security Lab at HP in Bristol, England, said the expected rise in the number of electronic devices -- connecting billions more people to the Internet -- would make cyberattacks more likely.

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Speaking at the launch of the new Cyber Security Centre at Oxford University, he explained that about 35 billion devices will be in use worldwide by the end of this decade, and approximately 24 million smartphone applications.

“The vast majority of software we will be using [by 2020] will be riddled with malware,” he warned.

“If you talk about four billion people going online by 2020, a large number of those people are in third world countries where they are looking for easy access to wealth or money – what better source of wealth than online?” Sadler said.

He said Internet crime would become “de-skilled” and added, “What today might be a very sophisticated attack on a nation state could by 2020 be an attack on you as an individual made by people who really earn very little a day – that kind of dollar-a-day threshold.”

“There are whole groups of people who haven’t realized the Internet is an asset and disruption of the Internet is something they can choose to do. Today we have about 30 percent of the world’s population online, but by 2020 we will have reached about 50 percent -- about four billion people,” Sadler said. “Of those four billion, almost all of them… are going to be engaged on the Internet with absolutely no idea what online security means.”

Professor Sadie Creese, director of the new research center at Oxford University, said cybersecurity "is on everyone's radar at the moment."

"We're already highly dependent on cyberspace for our home lives, our work lives, as a nation state, and globally, and that's just going to increase. And as our dependency increases, so does the attractiveness to people who would do us wrong," she said. “Even if we're not witnessing great acts of terrorism in cyberspace at the moment, many people believe it's a natural progression, and it's only a matter of time.”

“In reality, the days of defining a cyberspace and physical space divide are probably over. The truth of living today is we all coexist in both; we're entangled in a sense," Creese said. "We should expect everything that we see in what was previously considered physical space, to manifest in some way in cyberspace.”

The launch took place on Monday at the university’s historic Ashmolean Museum.

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President Barack Obama accused Iran on Tuesday of imposing an "electronic curtain" on its citizens and promised new U.S. steps aimed at helping to ease the Iranian people's access to the Internet, as a social media campaign designed to promote peace between ordinary Israelis and Iranians got underway.

Speaking directly to ordinary Iranians in a video message marking Nowruz, the Persian new year celebration, Obama acknowledged "continued tensions between our two countries," which stem mostly from Iran's defiance over its nuclear program.

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But he insisted that Americans want a dialogue with Iranians. "There is no reason for the United States and Iran to be divided from one another," he said.

Obama's overture to the Iranian people was the latest step in Washington's push to ratchet up pressure on Tehran. He has urged Israel to hold off on any attack on Iran's nuclear sites to allow more time for sanctions and diplomacy to work.

Renewing accusations of Iran's suppression of its people, Obama said Iranians were "denied the basic freedom to access the information that they want." He cited blocking of television and radio signals, monitoring of computers and cell phones and censoring of the Internet.

"Because of the actions of the Iranian regime, an electronic curtain has fallen around Iran," Obama said in the video address, which was transmitted in Farsi as well as English.

"Today, my administration is issuing new guidelines to make it easier for American businesses to provide software and services into Iran that will make it easier for the Iranian people to use the Internet," he said.

'Israel loves Iran'
Coincidentally, two Israelis, Ronny Edri and Michal Tamir, launched an internet-based project on Saturday seeking to reach out to ordinary people in Iran and express a desire for peace.

They developed colorful slogans, such as “Israel Loves Iran” and “We will never bomb you,” and urged people to add them to online photographs to reach out to ordinary Iranians.

In the “about you” section of their website, Edri wrote that for there to be war “first we must be afraid of each other, we must hate.”

“I’m not afraid of you, I don’t hate you. I don t even know you. No Iranian ever did me no harm. I never even met an Iranian…Just one in Paris in a museum. Nice dude,” Edri said, addressing Iranians. “I see sometime here, on the TV, an Iranian. He is talking about war. I’m sure he does not represent all the people of Iran. If you see someone on your TV talking about bombing you …be sure he does not represent all of us.”

“I’m not an official representative of my country. I m a father and a teacher. I know the streets of my town, I talk with my neighbors, my family, my students, my friends and in the name of all these people …we love you. We mean you no harm,” Edri added. “On the contrary, we want to meet, have some coffee and talk about sports.”

Some responded sarcastically, with one person using an image of the Greek’s Trojan horse in Troy, apparently taken from a film, with the message “Trojans, We will never bomb your country, We love you.”

 

However, there appeared to be a positive response from others, including Iranians.

On the “Love and Peace Campaign” Facebook page, which says it is run by a group of “independent Israeli-Iranian social activists and has more than 4,000 followers, a number of pictures were posted with slogans like “We love you Israeli people,” and “My Israeli friends, I don’t hate you, I don’t want War, love peace.” A heart symbol was used by some to represent the word love.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Iran has arrested filmmakers, bloggers, minorities and lawyers and imposed limits on the public's use of the Web to try to squelch dissent and contact with the outside world ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections on Thursday, the human rights group Amnesty International reported Monday.

Iranian authorities have detained more than 10 journalists, writers and bloggers, as well as members of religious and ethnic minorities since campaigning began, apparently to dissuade people from criticizing the government or participating in protests to mark the anniversary of "Arab Spring" uprisings around the Mideast, Amnesty said in a 71-page report.

The authorities also issued new rules in January requiring Internet cafe owners to install closed-circuit cameras and collect customers’ names and contact information, both of which must be kept for six months, it said.

"The noose just seems to be tightening," said Elise Auerbach, an Iran specialist for Amnesty. "The hand of the government seems to be everywhere and I think people have reason to fear that … there’s nowhere to hide."

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Security forces -– including a new cyber police unit –- can monitor activists as they use personal computers in their homes. A new cyber army -- reportedly connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard -- has conducted attacks on websites at home and abroad, the report said.

Human Rights Watch also recently noted the government's focus on the Internet in the run-up to the elections for the 290-seat parliament, noting a judiciary threat that those who called for a boycott of the ballot -- as reformists and opposition activists have done -- would be prosecuted.

"Unfortunately it seems the only lesson authorities learned from the popular protests that followed the disputed (presidential) election (in) 2009 is that the free flow of information is an existential threat to their ability to rule absolutely," Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch's deputy Middle East director, said in January.

The Tor Network, which provides free software for anonymous use of the Internet, reported that on Feb. 9, Tehran began filtering keywords and throttling or shutting down access to sites that use a form of security called Secure Socket Layers, or SSL. The action is blocking email and some Web access for as many as 30 million Iranians who use SSL-protected sites, reported CBR Systems & Network Security, a European technology organization.

Related Story: Iran blocking 30 million from email, Web ahead of election

In early January, Iran’s intelligence minister said secret services had arrested several people on charges of spying for the United States and seeking to undermine the elections. State TV quoted Heidar Moslehias saying that the suspects were in touch with their contacts outside the country via the Internet, The Associated Press reported.  Separately, a top Iranian law enforcement official described Google as an "espionage tool" in mid-January, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Five documentary directors and a producer-distributor with links to outside broadcasters were arrested in September. All were held in prison, with limited contact with their families, until they were all released on bail by mid-December.

Amnesty said that harassment and imprisonment of human rights activists also had increased as part of a "worsening overall human rights situation in Iran," includung the shuttering of several nonprofit groups. It also reported that public executions quadrupled from 2010 to 2011 as authorities sought to "strike fear into society."

Some observers see the large 2009 protests in Iran as the precursor to those of the 2011 Arab Spring. Iranian opposition leaders who called for the solidarity demonstrations in February 2011 -- Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi -- have been under de facto house arrest since then, Amnesty said, though Mehdi Karroubi’s wife was released last July.

"They (the Islamic Republic) are going to use everything they have to ensure that these elections are conducted in a peaceful way and that the turnout is high," Mohsen Milani, professor of politics and chair of the department of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla., told msnbc.com.

They've "arrested people who in their mind are troublemakers" and are trying to stifle social media networks, Mohsen said. They've also noted they will step up security and have alerted people to the potential for violence -- a strategy they can use to tell the public, 'We told you so,' in case there are problems or declare victory, in the case there are not, he added.

"I’ve never seen the Islamic Republic … being as careful about elections as they are this time in terms of security measures. They are ready," he said.

Mohsen said he believed that Iran's "oppressive measures" would continue after the vote, warning, "I believe they will intensify in the coming month and year."

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Data on all phone calls, text messages, email traffic and online visits would be stored for a year in vast databases under a new anti-terrorism plan in Britain, The Telegraph reported Saturday on its website.

The report, which did not cite sources, said that phone companies and broadband providers would be ordered to store the information themselves for a year for security services’ “real-time” inspection under the plan. Contents of phone calls, texts or emails would not be recorded, The Telegraph said, but the databases would retain the phone numbers and email addresses sent from and to.

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And the plan would reach into social networking for the first time, The Telegraph reported, allowing security services to get information about direct messages between users of Facebook, Twitter and similar sites, and even between players in online video games.

The Telegraph said the government had been negotiating with Internet companies for two months and the plan could be announced as early as May.

The newspaper noted that there could be concerns over civil liberties issues and over the security of the records themselves.

It wasn’t clear if the plan applied only to domestic communications or whether international calls, texts and tweets would be swept up in the databases. The newspaper described the plan as a reworking of a proposal abandoned in 2009 by the previous Labour government amid a storm of criticism.

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ROME – Roman Catholic Church leaders have unveiled an Internet teaching project to help clergy around the world root out pedophiles in their ranks and protect children from potential abusers.

Ending a four-day conference on child abuse in Rome Thursday, Father Francois-Xavier Dumortier said the $1.60 million project would provide multilingual advice and access to research on pedophilia and how to respond to the problem.

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"It will help to develop a culture of listening ... a different face to the culture of silence," said Dumortier, who is rector at the Pontifical Gregorian University where the conference was held.

An association for victims of abuse, while not commenting directly on the Internet project, has dismissed the conference as "window dressing" and said the Vatican should publish its documentation on abuse and hand it over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.

Victims' groups for years have accused some bishops in the Church of preferring silence and cover-up to coming clean on the scandal, which has darkened the image of the Church around the world.

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But on Wednesday the Vatican's top official for dealing with sexual abuse of minors, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, said hiding behind a culture of "omerta" -- the Italian word for the Mafia's code of silence -- would be deadly for the Church.

The symposium brought together some 200 people including bishops, leaders of religious orders, victims of abuse and psychologists, and some participants saw it as a turning point in the Church's approach to the crisis.

"The Church now has a baseline about where we are starting from," Brendan Geary from the Marist Brothers religious order said.

"We start by listening to victims and hearing their experience. We make sure the Church has the highest standards for protecting children."

Asia – next crisis?
However, a top Asian church official told the conference that a culture of silence prevalent on the continent has kept many victims from coming forward, as concerns rise that Asia may be the next ground zero in the abuse scandal.

Monsignor Luis Antonio Tagle, archbishop of Manila, Philippines, said deference to church authorities in places like the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Philippines may also have contributed to keeping a lid on reports. He said more and more victims have come forward in the past five years in the Philippines, but that incidents of priests keeping mistresses still far outpace reports of priests preying on children.

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Tagle's presentation made clear that the sex abuse scandal — which first erupted in Ireland in the 1990s, the United States in 2002, and Europe at large in 2010 — hadn't yet reached Asia.

But the concern is very real that it might: In November, the federation of Asian bishops' conferences said the church has to take "drastic and immediate measures" to contain the problem before it gets out of hand. 

Tagle said he didn't know if the steady increase in victims coming forward over the last five years is "a prelude to an explosion," but he acknowledged that the reported cases are probably a fraction of the total.

"How Asians normally respond to an embarrassing situation is to preserve one's dignity, to preserve one's honor. Usually that takes the form of silence," he told reporters. "It's not because the person doesn't want to share it, but that by divulging everything, the little bit of honor that is left in me will be taken away from me."

He said mandatory reporting laws, which would compel bishops or religious superiors to report accusations of abuse to police, would be "difficult culturally" to swallow in many Asian countries where victims may prefer to seek justice discreetly, within the church's own legal system. 

‘No substitute for openness, transparency’  
The Internet-based "Center for Child Protection" will work with medical institutions and universities to develop what the Church hopes will be a constant response to the problems of sexual abuse.

It will be posted in German, English, French, Spanish and Italian and help bishops and other church workers put into place Vatican guidelines to protect children.

The message from Vatican officials who have addressed the symposium is that local Church officials must cooperate with civil authorities according to local law in cases of suspected pedophilia.

The scandals have led to costly legal action, are blamed for an exodus of believers in some European nations, including Pope Benedict's native Germany, and have damaged the Church's moral standing in hitherto staunchly Catholic states.

Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx gave a speech at the close of the symposium pointing out that the scandal had cost the church credibility "from which it has yet to recover."

"Stonewalling, trivialization and relativization will not foster a new credibility," he said. "There can therefore be no substitute for openness, transparency and truthfulness."

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Police in New Zealand on Friday raided several homes and businesses linked to the founder of Megaupload.com, a giant file-sharing site shut down by U.S. authorities, and seized guns, millions of dollars, and nearly $5 million in luxury cars, officials said.

Police arrested founder Kim Dotcom and three Megaupload employees Thursday on U.S. accusations that they facilitated millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content, costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. Extradition proceedings against them could last a year or more.

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With 150 million registered users, about 50 million hits daily and endorsements from music superstars, Megaupload.com was among the world's biggest file-sharing sites. According to a U.S. indictment, the site, which was shut down Thursday, earned Dotcom $42 million in 2010 alone.

Although the company is based in Hong Kong and Dotcom lives in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was gave U.S. prosecutors jurisdiction to act.

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New Zealand police served 10 search warrants at several businesses and homes around the city of Auckland.

Police spokesman Grant Ogilvie said the seized cars include a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe worth more than $400,000 as well as several Mercedes. Two short-barreled shotguns and a number of valuable artworks were also confiscated, he added.

Pictures posted on Flickr and technology news website Gizmodo showed the haul included a 2010 Maserati and a pink Cadillac. One Mercedes had the personalized license place "MAFIA,"while another had a plated that read "CEO."

A report by New Zealand news website stuff.co.nz said Detective Inspector Grant Wormald from the Organized and Financial Crime Agency NZ (OFCANZ) gave details of the extraordinary raid, which had been planned for several months.

"Police arrived in two marked police helicopters," said Wormald, according to the website. "Despite our staff clearly identifying themselves Mr. Dotcom retreated into the house and activated a number of electronic locking mechanisms. While police neutralized these locks he then further barricaded himself into a safe room within the house which officers had to cut their way into."

Once they gained entry into this room they found Dotcom near a firearm which had the appearance of a sawed-off shotgun, Wormald said.

"It was definitely not as simple as knocking at the front door," he added.

New Zealand's Fairfax Media reported that the four defendants stood together in an Auckland courtroom in the first step of the extradition proceedings.

'Nothing to hide'
Dotcom's lawyer raised objections to a media request to take photographs and video, but then Dotcom spoke, saying he didn't mind photos or video "because we have nothing to hide." The judge granted the media access, and ruled that the four would remain in custody until a second hearing Monday.

Dotcom, Megaupload's former CEO and current chief innovation officer, is a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany who had his name legally changed. The 37-year-old was previously known as Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor.

Two other German citizens and one Dutch citizen also were arrested and three other defendants — another German, a Slovakian and an Estonian — remain at large.

Megaupload has retained Washington, D.C. power attorney Bob Bennett in the case, according to a person inside the company. Bennett is best known for representing former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The person within Megaupload spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the company's plans.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set "a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?"

The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Wired shut down in protest of two U.S. proposals intended to make it easier for authorities to go after sites with pirated material, especially those with overseas headquarters and servers.

Before Megaupload was taken down, the company posted a statement saying allegations that it facilitated massive breaches of copyright laws were "grotesquely overblown."

"The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch," the statement said.

Several sister sites were also shut down, including one dedicated to sharing pornography files.

Retaliation
News of the shutdown seemed to bring retaliation from hackers who claimed credit for attacking the Justice Department's and FBI websites. Federal officials confirmed the Justice Department site was down for hours Thursday evening, and that the disruption was being "treated as a malicious act."

A loose affiliation of hackers known as "Anonymous" claimed credit for the attacks. Also hacked was the site for the Motion Picture Association of America.

According to the indictment, Megaupload was estimated at one point to be the 13th most frequently visited website on the Internet. Current estimates by companies that monitor Web traffic place it in the top 100.

Megaupload is considered a "cyberlocker," in which users can upload and transfer files that are too large to send by email. Such sites can have perfectly legitimate uses. But the Motion Picture Association of America, which has campaigned for a crackdown on piracy, estimated that the vast majority of content being shared on Megaupload was in violation of copyright laws.

The website allowed users to download some content for free, but made money by charging subscriptions to people who wanted access to faster download speeds or extra content. The website also sold advertising.

Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

The company listed Swizz Beatz, a musician who married Keys in 2010, as its CEO. He was not named in the indictment and, via a representative, declined to comment.

The five-count indictment, which alleges copyright infringement as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering and racketeering, described a site designed specifically to reward users who uploaded pirated content for sharing, and turned a blind eye to requests from copyright holders to remove copyright-protected files.

The Justice Department said it was illegal for anyone to download pirated content, but their investigation focused on the leaders of the company, not end users who may have downloaded a few movies for personal viewing.

A lawyer who represented the company in a lawsuit last year declined to comment Thursday. Efforts by the Associated Press to reach an attorney representing Dotcom were unsuccessful.

The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.