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IT鈥橲 the worm that goes to the very top. US president Barack Obama personally backed the Stuxnet cyberattack that destroyed hundreds of uranium centrifuges in Iran in 2010. So claims The New York Times writer David Sanger in a book published on 5 June. As news of the latest computer virus, Flame, emerges (see 鈥淲hy we may never know who created Flame virus鈥�) he claims that Stuxnet was a joint creation of US and Israeli intelligence agencies.
In Confront and Conceal: Obama鈥檚 secret wars, Sanger claims Obama pledged in 2008 to maintain two of the Bush administration鈥檚 security programmes: the drone war in Afghanistan and 鈥淥lympic Games鈥� 鈥� codename for a project designed to undermine Iran鈥檚 nuclear ambitions via computer malware. As a result, Sanger alleges, Stuxnet was created by engineers at the US National Security Agency in collaboration with Unit 8200, a specialist cyber operation of Israeli military intelligence.
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Once delivered, it forced fast-spinning centrifuges in a plant in Natanz to stop suddenly, smashing them to pieces. It worked until a programming error allowed Stuxnet to copy itself outside the plant, alerting the world, and Iran, to its presence.
If true, it is the first time that the US has been known to have used cyberweapons against another country.
聯If true, it is the first time that the US has been known to have used cyberweapons against another country聰