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US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

arstechnica.com

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Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#11

Post by jacobr »

netcan wrote: post #7
Fizzadar wrote: post #4

This feels similar to the Megaupload case; America desperately throwing its weight around outside it's borders, with a total disregard for the law. And, just like the Megaupload case, they have fucked up big time. Why does the American govt. feel it has the right to choose who can become a nuclear power or not anyway?

Some things are a question of right, some things are a question of need or interest. The US has enemies and it doesn't want them to have nuclear weapons.

Is there any proof that the facility in question deals with uranium enrichment for military purposes?

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#13

Post by elithrar »

jgrahamc wrote: post #12

It's amusing that they 'lost control' of it because a simple bit of code along the lines of "if www.google.com resolves then shutdown" would be effective at detecting whether it was on the Internet or not.

> It's amusing that they 'lost control' of it because a simple bit of code along the lines of "if www.google.com resolves then shutdown" would be effective at detecting whether it was on the Internet or not.

Not really. The code would need to rely on or implement additional network (or DNS) code, and then also make a network connection; making it much more easily traced.

Either way, I think the "lost control" headline here is a bit much. Stuxnet, from the analysis performed, was harmless beyond the target network.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#14

Post by ajuc »

jgrahamc wrote: post #12

It's amusing that they 'lost control' of it because a simple bit of code along the lines of "if www.google.com resolves then shutdown" would be effective at detecting whether it was on the Internet or not.

Such mechanism would make it very easy for Iranians to defeat the purpose of this program.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#15

Post by forgotusername »

From the NYT article:

> American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.

Convenient. Not only was the reporter able to secure one reliable, anonymous, highly privileged source to confirm the story, but he found multiple!

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#16

Post by forza »

ars wrote: post #5

arstechnica is taking the NY Times article and extrapolating too much. Confirmed? No it's not. It was suspected before, and it still is. And lost control would imply they could not control what it did to the target, which is incorrect. It did escape to the wild, but that's not really loosing control when it was designed to do nothing harmful on non target machines. Better to read the original, and the discussion on i…

It got discovered, I would call that loosing control.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#18

Post by hieronymusN »

Fizzadar wrote: post #4

This feels similar to the Megaupload case; America desperately throwing its weight around outside it's borders, with a total disregard for the law. And, just like the Megaupload case, they have fucked up big time. Why does the American govt. feel it has the right to choose who can become a nuclear power or not anyway?

To play Devil's Advocate: How did they "fuck up big time"? From what I can tell from press coverage Stuxnet did exactly what it was supposed to do - damage centrifuges at Natanz.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#19

Post by rooshdi »

Fizzadar wrote: post #4

This feels similar to the Megaupload case; America desperately throwing its weight around outside it's borders, with a total disregard for the law. And, just like the Megaupload case, they have fucked up big time. Why does the American govt. feel it has the right to choose who can become a nuclear power or not anyway?

Because they're protecting us, remember?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7ePrCAqzo

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#20

Post by joshmaker »

Fizzadar wrote: post #4

This feels similar to the Megaupload case; America desperately throwing its weight around outside it's borders, with a total disregard for the law. And, just like the Megaupload case, they have fucked up big time. Why does the American govt. feel it has the right to choose who can become a nuclear power or not anyway?

Because Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treat...) and their development of Nuclear weapons is thus in violation of international law.
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