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October 01, 2010

Who's targeting Iran with a cybervirus? Israel?

The NYT basically says that if the Stuxnet virus was produced by a government's electronic espionage agency or program, it's a flop because it hit so many sites besides the computers at Iran's Natanz nuclear centrifuge site.

That's entirely backward thinking. Wouldn't a smart enough, high-tech nation consider "looking incompetent" precisely to try to cover up its tracks?

Or, there's another possibility, in a country like Israel. This wasn't a government operation. Rather, some individual(s) did it.

Plus there's new, additional, albeit indirect, information from inside the code pointing at Israel (or individual Israelis) as the creator, and Iran as the target.

And, the Christian Science Monitor further addresses the claims of why Israel or some other government couldn't have written Stuxnet because it's too clunky or whatever.

Here's why it's spread beyond Bushehr if that was its intended target:
Stuxnet might have been spread by the USB memory sticks used by a Russian contractor while building the Bushehr nuclear plant, Langner offers. The same contractor has jobs in several countries where the attackware has been uncovered.

Sounds simple enough. And, I think, probably known to the NYT writer. Or, it should have been. No, John Markoff isn't a "Friend of Likud" or something. But, he's a tech writer, not a national security writer, so, I don't think so. Rather, nobody on the national security side was giving him feedback, I guess.

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