The Dutch intelligence agency, Online Cigarettes Store USA known as AIVD, along with U.S. and British intelligence, infiltrated Khan’s supply network of European consultants and front companies who helped build the nuclear programs in Iran and Libya. That infiltration didn’t just involve old-school tradecraft but also employed offensive hacking operations being developed as part of the burgeoning field of digital espionage.
AIVD’s cyber capabilities are well known now — last year it was revealed that AIVD Cheap Newport Cigarettes Online Sale was responsible for tipping off the FBI to the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee, knowledge it had acquired because its operatives had hacked into computers belonging to the Russian hacking group known as Cozy Bear in 2014 and were watching in 2015 when the Russians broke into computers at the U.S. State Department and the DNC.
But during the early days of Iran’s nuclear program, AIVD’s hacking team was small and still developing.The Iranian Newport box 100s cigarettes program, which had been on the back burner for years, kicked into high gear in 1996, when Iran secretly purchased a set of blueprints and centrifuge components from Khan. In 2000, Iran broke ground at Natanz with plans to build a facility that would hold 50,000 spinning centrifuges for enriching uranium gas. That same year, AIVD hacked the email system of a key Iranian defense organization in an effort to obtain more information about Iran’s nuclear plans, according to sources.