Stuxnet: Imagine My Surprise

Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay Excerpts:

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.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”
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.

This comes as a total shock. Really. I won't admit otherwise until such time when everyone already knows and the point is irrelevant.

Let X=X

Iran's nuclear agency battles computer worm that can bring down power plants. Excerpts in italics:
Iranian media reports said Friday that the country's nuclear agency is trying to combat a complex computer worm that has affected industrial sites in Iran and is capable of taking over power plants.

The computer virus, which attacks a widely used industrial system, appears aimed mostly at Iran and its sophistication suggests a state may have been involved in creating it, Western cyber security companies said earlier in the day.

This is but the first of many super-cyberweapons. What might the future hold? Entire national infrastructures can all be attacked, all simultaneously. This utter and complete destruction can be mirrored in multiple countries. Battles will be waged along fiber optic tubes and via satellite. "Targeted Destruction" might be en vogue now, but what about the future? Will this different means of warfare lead to new and different tactics? And, lest we forget, each new variation will be more deadly and sophisticated than its predecessor. Global, long-duration chaos could happen almost instantly. And we as a planet may never return to the level of advancement achieved just prior to this technological annihilation, not in our lifetimes.

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!