If you can’t kill Iran’s nuclear weapons program with bombs, try a worm
I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the story about the cyber attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities, but it is both interesting and important.
"Stuxnet" is the name of a worm that has apparently been introduced somehow into the system that controls the Iranian nuclear processes – specifically at those facilities thought to be focused on producing nuclear weapons. This is no ordinary malware worm, but an extremely sophisticated and targeted one which is apparently causing some real havoc in Iran.
Iran admitted Monday, Sept. 27 it was under full-scale cyber terror attack. The official IRNA news agency quoted Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran’s government Information Technology Company, as saying that the Stuxnet computer worm “is mutating and wreaking further havoc on computerized industrial equipment.”
Stuxnet was no normal worm, he said: “The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading.”
The mutation continues to infect and infest the Iranian systems causing all sorts of problems. Experts say that such sophistication would require “the backing of a nation-state” to put it together. I have a sneaking suspicion I know who it is, and this is their answer to whether or not bombing the facility is feasible. Uh, no – but when you can do this, why do that?
Here are a couple of backgrounders on the story – here and here. This is going to be an interesting one to watch.
~McQ