'Cry Stuxnet and let slip the dogs of war?' The potentially deadly viruses of cyber warfare.

AuthorAbrahamson, James L.

Dean Picciotti, CEO of Lexington Technology Auditing, and Gregory Montanaro, executive director of FPRI's Center on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, joined forces on this report concerning the "most recent battle in the New Cold War"--the battle over nuclear weapons. The present weapon of choice in this struggle is a computer virus, Stuxnet, which now plagues Iran's nuclear program but can also focus on many industrial and factory control processes.

The attack on Iran may have begun with the installation of Stuxnet, via an easily concealed USB memory stick, on a Microsoft workstation running Iran's Siemens software. Though that cyber attack is the most recent, it is not the first. In 2007 and 2008, Russia made similar attacks on both Estonia and Georgia.

Michael Scheidell, Chief Technology Officer of SECNAP Network Security, has claimed that "Stuxnet's complexity, multi-layered design, and range of technically disparate elements" suggest its creation by a "large, well-funded team ... possibly a nation-state" seeking "retaliation against Iran." With so much of the world "interconnected and reliant on computers," the authors speculate that cyberspace has become a "fifth domain" of international...

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