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Report: Stuxnet a Joint U.S.-Israel Project

(New York Times) William J. Broad, John Markoff and David E. Sanger - Over the past two years, Israel's nuclear facility in Dimona has served as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran's efforts to make a bomb of its own. "The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out," said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. The retiring chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could delay a bomb. The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed. The worm appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran's nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts believe the code contains the seeds for yet more assaults.
2011-01-17 07:30:04
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