Stuxnet: How USA and Israel created anti-Iran virus, and then lost control of it

There is a simply fascinating report in today’s New York Times describing how the Stuxnet virus was created by the USA to target an Iranian nuclear facility, but accidentally escaped into the wider world.

The report comes from David E. Sanger, the Chief Washington correspondent at The New York Times and author of the upcoming book “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power”.

Here is a quick summary of the claims made in the report:

• Feeling threatened by the possibility that Iran would enrich uranium at a nuclear facility at Natanz that could be used to create weapons of mass destruction, US President George W Bush initiated a plan to seize control of computer systems at the plant…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.