Did Obama admin sabotage Iran's nuke program with a computer worm?

[Clio the Leo]

Apparently so....

Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: January 15, 2011

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

<snip>

Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.

In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran’s ability to buy components and do business around the world.

The gruff Mr. Dagan, whose organization has been accused by Iran of being behind the deaths of several Iranian scientists, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could delay a bomb until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from Israel’s long-held argument that Iran was on the cusp of success.

The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.

<snip>

Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.

But Israeli officials grin widely when asked about its effects. Mr. Obama’s chief strategist for combating weapons of mass destruction, Gary Samore, sidestepped a Stuxnet question at a recent conference about Iran, but added with a smile: “I’m glad to hear they are having troubles with their centrifuge machines, and the U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to make it more complicated.”

In recent days, American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity have said in interviews that they believe Iran’s setbacks have been underreported. That may explain why Mrs. Clinton provided her public assessment while traveling in the Middle East last week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

[trumad]

1. Obama's Secret Service name is Stuxnet.

[crikkett]

4. No it's not, don't lie. n/t

[trumad]

6. It is...I swear...I read it on the internet.

[jillan]

16. No silly, Stuxnet is the name of the worm virus. Maybe Obama's name is Studnet :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Some interesting reading.

[Jeroen]

23. Its Renegade

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/obama-family-secret-servi_n_142767.html

[xchrom]

2. so we've entered the period of war with viruses and worms.

ever more complicated designs. -- i wonder why i see serious trouble with this in the future?

[Gman]

3. Beats the hell out of bombing them

It's much less destructive.

[smiley_glad_hands]

7. +1 eom

[backscatter712]

18. +1

[olegramps]

5. It struck me as really comical.

It appears that it was a program designed with the cooperation of several countries. The program had two aspects. The first was that their computers were programed to appear that the centrifuges were operating correctly. The other program took over the operation and sped up the centrifuges causing them to self destruct. I could just imagine their scientists watching the thing going crazy while they were being told that everything was going hunky-dory. I don't know why but it struck me as funny. I could just see them running around pushing buttons like madmen yelling where's the plug.

[Mopar151]

9. Toyota software? n/t

[cags]

8. And that right there is why we need a smart president, we didn't have to blow up children...

or go deeper into debt to protect ourselves.

[rug]

13. Unlike the current wars.

[vaberella]

20. Sadly Al-Qaueda doesn't really use computers. If they did, we'd be sorted. n/t

[rug]

24. It's a good thing there are 30,000 more troops to root out the 150 al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

[hack89]

10. I hope so. nt

[golfguru]

11. LMAO are the Iranians running their nuke program on internet?

If they are, we have nothing to fear from them. How else can the "worm"
get into their computers unless the computers are on World Wide Web?

[killbotfactory]

12. My guess is that it either done by spies, or planted in the firmware of the equipment

before it was shipped to Iran.

[dbmk]

26. Get one flash drive inside their network

And you are up and running.

Give or take.

[Arkana]

14. Our President's the ultimate geek.

Is it possible we elected Morpheus and didn't realize it?

[boppers]

17. He did get a question about bubble sort at a google-hosted Q and A.

He won a lot of geek votes for it.

[vaberella]

21. He should be asked a question on 4-Chan---he'd rule the world at that point. n/t

[boppers]

22. "Dear president: Is the cake a lie?"

It would certainly be interesting.

Especially if he could tri-force.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

15. Worm warfare!

[vaberella]

19. I don't know what else proves that Obama is the offspring of Spock and Uhara.

Check out this crazy espionage shit. You'll never hear about it on the MSM.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. I suspect the Chinese are still miles ahead on this.

The possibilities of cyber-warfare haven't really been tested or demonstrated yet, but if they ever are I'm not optimistic about America's chances.

[mochajava666]

27. I'm not so big on giving the enemy a weapon

that we have no defense against. I saw on a MSM morning show that interviewed a cyber-war expert and he said that you would only have to change a few lines of code and relaunch it back at us to mess with our electrical grid, our nuclear power plants, our hydroelectric dams, etc. Of course figuring out the code will take some time, but we may be very vulnerable to some nasty blow-back.

I heard that it was developed by the Bush administration in 2007 and 2008 and launched by Obama in 2009, but my info was from a MSM morning TV show.

[saras]

28. We're more vulnerable than they are

They have much less to do to secure their computers against this sort of thing in the future than we do to secure our computers, which in general can't be done without putting them behind physically secure walls and disconnecting them from the internet backbone (not just the visible internet).