12 October 2013

Don’t Need No Stinking Stuxnet to Make You Worry

A sends:

Source: http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/5910/iaea-hacking

From comments :

"So far they have been far smarter than their enemies: in the Saudi Aramco case they have pointed out to all that petroleum production is something they can (and will) hit without needing the old technique of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, with this move they have seeded doubt in the minds of those collaborating with IAEA.

It is a subtle move: hit a machine which any IT techie will tell you is non-operational, non-critical, old, bla-bla-bla, remind people that what they write and what they do might come back to haunt them later. So, if you are the IAEA equivalent of the analyst providing known-rubbish “proof” to the Coalition of the Willing about mobile chemical labs, you are now wondering whether your name is out or might be out.

Seeding doubt about the security capabilities of IAEA’s IT department to the world is much smarter than advertising a centrifuge-busting virus which might or might not have worked and for which there is no independent proof it ever did its job.

The amateurish-looking hack is not representative of capabilities but, if you will, an addendum to the warning: we don’t need no stinking Stuxnet to make you worry and we know PR after Iraq’s WMDs is not something you can ignore."