Obama ordered Stuxnet cyberattack, reports say. Did it leave US vulnerable?

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR:  Stuxnet, the world’s first publicly identified cyber superweapon, was unleashed against Iran‘s nuclear fuel-enrichment facility as part of a joint US-Israel cybersabotage operation, according to press reports Friday citing anonymous administration officials…

In the longer run, however, it also raises questions about how a US national policy of using powerful digital weapons could impact American security. Of particular concern is the possibility that such attacks could provide a digital copy of the cyberweapon to rogue nations or that hacktivists could reverse-engineer the weapon for use against the power grid or other key US infrastructure…

“Certainly we have thought Stuxnet was very likely to be a US-Israel operation – and that assumption has now turned out to be the case,” says Stewart Baker, a lawyer and former senior official at the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. “In some ways, I do feel as though we’ve been living in a glass house for years and now we’ve decided we’re going to invent rocks.”…   (more)

 

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