GCHQ intel used to develop Stuxnet, claims new documentary The super worm known as Stuxnet was but a cog in an active US war program in which hundreds of thousands of network implants and backdoors in Iran networks were actively maintained to facilitate a devastating barrage of hacking attacks, a documentary claims. Zero Days, due to screen at the Berlin Film Festival today, claims …
One of the more popular scenarios for film and book plots involves a nasty germ developed by some government as a bio-weapon. Since microorganisms can't distinguish Friend from Enema (heh) the killer bug escapes into the wild and starts killing everyone. It's entirely plausible, because we know governments really can be that myopic.
The same thing is happening for real with cyber-war. Stuxtnet thankfully can't KILL you, but it totally validates the "short-sighted government program to create indiscriminate weapons" model.
So who' going to make us a film about a future Stuxtnet that destroys the world's computing systems and brings down civilization as we know it?
Hmmmm. They claim Stuxnet was written with information supplied by the GCHQ? Like what? The GCHQ is primarily involved in spying by intercept, mainly of landlines and wireless, such as undersea intercontinental cables, so please explain why the Iranians would either have their top secret nuke equipment connected to a public line the GCHQ could monitor, or why they would be silly enough to being sending/speaking over an insecure wireless connection? To believe either requires the Iranians to be pretty dumb in the first place.
There's also the matter of the little fact that the Yanks (or Israelis) didn't need to know anything from the GCHQ. The systems targeted by Stuxnet were vanilla Siemens SCADA systems supplied by European companies, all the details were already available to the CIA and MOSSAD. The launch mechanism is widely accepted to have been an infected USB key or keys, implying the target systems were not connected to an external network or phoneline. Yawn. Sounds like more unsubstantiated rumour designed to appeal to the paranoid conspiracy theorists.
They had to bring in British involvement somewhere because the UK, for historical reasons, is perceived in Iran as the evil mastermind behind all the plots that threaten them.
Also Hollywood tells us that the baddies are always British, albeit sometimes with an odd accent.
"They had to bring in British involvement somewhere because the UK, for historical reasons, is perceived in Iran as the evil mastermind behind all the plots that threaten them....." Which is quite ironic, really. In August 1941 the Brits and the Soviets decided they needed to secure the railway linking the British-controlled Middle East to Russia, so that Lend Lease supplies could be sent to Stalin. Britain invaded Iran from Iraq and India and the Soviets from the North. In a ceasefire agreement with the Shah, the British and Soviets agreed to pull their forces out of the country within six months of the end of the War.
In late 1945, after weeks of violent clashes, a Soviet-backed separatist People's Republic of Azerbaijan was founded, followed by the Kurdish People's Republic. Soviet armed forces blocked Iranian efforts to regain control of either region. When the six-month deadline for forces withdrawal came around the Brits honoured their commitment and shipped out their troops, but the Soviets refused, being intent on turning Iran into a Communist state. Eventually the matter became the first complaint filed with the newly-formed UN Security Council, and the Soviets were forced to withdraw, though they still kept troops in Azerbaijan and forced it into the USSR.
But somehow the Soviet angle always get a pass and the Brits get labelled The Little Devils.
"In August 1941 the Brits and the Soviets decided they needed to secure the railway linking the British-controlled Middle East to Russia,"
If memory serves correctly didn't our engineers actually build - or maybe rebuild to standard gauge - that railway with a view to handing it over to the Iranians at wars end? I haven't got my books to hand but that sounds familiar
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