Stuxnet: The destructive brilliance that is cyberwarfare. Did it usher in a new era of technological weaponry?

Written by Editor on Saturday, November 27, 2010. Posted in International

Stuxnet demonstrates that online sabotage compounds the dangers that are now inherent in national conflicts.

Allahpundit has the details at HotAir.com:

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Sounds like it was first injected into computers outside the plant that were being accessed by people who worked inside, e.g., some nuclear technician’s laptop or desktop. If the technician carelessly used his own flash drive on the outside computer, he’d inadvertently transfer Stuxnet to it and then carry it into the building with him, thus avoiding the need for someone to physically infiltrate Natanz. So not only did they devise a plan to virtually bomb the facility from the inside, they likely got one of Iran’s own people to unwittingly deliver the payload: Thus, not only did the coders need a mind-boggling degree of knowledge about the vulnerabilities in more than one software platform, they needed intelligence on Iran’s program so deep that not even the UN had all the details. On top of all that, the worm was programmed to disguise what it was doing so that the engineers on the premises would think the problem with the centrifuges was in the hardware, not the software. No wonder that paranoia at Iran’s nuclear facilities is now allegedly such that the regime’s counterintelligence agents are making life a “living hell” for the nuclear scientists who work there. Stuxnet: The second-greatest story ever told.