Stuxnet 007

Maybe more like a job for James Phelps and the Impossible Mission Force:

In the 20th century, this would have been a job for James Bond.

The mission: Infiltrate the highly advanced, securely guarded enemy headquarters where scientists in the clutches of an evil master are secretly building a weapon that can destroy the world. Then render that weapon harmless and escape undetected.

But in the 21st century, Bond doesn’t get the call. Instead, ththe job is handled by a suave and very sophisticated secret computer worm, a jumble of code called Stuxnet, which in the last year has not only crippled Iran’s nuclear program but has caused a major rethinking of computer security around the globe.

Fox News does a good job explaining in non-technese, the damage done, how Stuxnet was spread and how it infiltrates some pretty tight security. They also provide some insight into who may have built the trojan.

Langer argues that no single Western intelligence agency had the skills to pull this off alone. The most likely answer, he says, is that a consortium of intelligence agencies worked together to build the cyber bomb. And he says the most likely confederates are the United States, because it has the technical skills to make the virus, Germany, because reverse-engineering Sieman’s product would have taken years without it, and Russia, because of its familiarity with both the Iranian nuclear plant and Sieman’s systems

A good story and excellent reporting, although they never mentioned the most responsible for the incident were those who decided to use MSoft in what should ham been a secure application.  Being stupid has consequences.  Fortunately the Iranian government isn’t all that smart, and Seimens isn’t getting the rap they deserve for allowing this to happen.

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Blogging is something I do for myself. I've been blogging since Sept. 2003, mostly about politics, guns, and observations about the word around me.
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