uncomputing

hidden in plain sight

stuxnet is a computer worm that was discovered out in the wild in July 2010. it spread everywhere, but it turned out to be an entirely new type of cyber-weapon: it turns off Siemens nuclear centrifuges, the kind used in Iran’s nuclear program.

the internal workings of stuxnet–the part that turns off centrifuges–is thought by all analysts to be too sophisticated and require too much testing equipment to have been created by anyone but a nation-state.

according to the new york times, israel created an entire model of an iranian plant, with working centrifuges, in order to create and then spread the virus.

israel had help:

In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities.
Siemens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.

so: the us, israel, and siemens collaborated to develop a clandestine cyberwarfare tool that they kept hidden, cleverly packaged to make inconspicuous, then released it into the wild, where it reportedly destabilized about 20% of iran’s centrifuges.

so: a secret super-sophisticated weapon used to target a country with which neither we or israel have a declared war. or any public/democratic assent to such action.

which part of that tracks with your sense of “we the people”?

and what aren’t they willing to do?