Worm Was Perfect for Sabotaging Centrifuges | Hacker News Reader

Worm Was Perfect for Sabotaging Centrifuges

nytimes.com

51 pointsyagibear13 comments

I'm tremendously jealous of whoever got to write it. To get paid for (probably) months or years to work on something of this technical sophistication, with (I guess) virtually unlimited resources and access to technical details us mere mortals would never get their hands on; it's an awesome project to hack on. It's really a clashing if raw mind power - pulling out everything you have, with great resources behind you, to beat the defenders who are doing everything they can to stop you.

yeah, and the thrill of not knowing whether you'll be quietly disappeared when you finish the job, and if not, how cool would it be if your code all worked perfectly and the nuclear reactor did blow up! Really awesome. I think I'll stick with web development though.

I've never heard of rumors (let alone proof) of people working on military project who all of a sudden start disappearing. The Washington DC area should be full of stories of engineers who went MIA. The 'risk' surely doesn't stop 1000's of NSA, FBI and military personnel and contractors to work there.

I guess you can debate the morality of developing weapons. I'd say that blowing up an Iranian nuclear bomb factory is a net positive. But that's irrelevant to my point, which was how great it would be to work on a cutting edge project with heaps of resources.

Is there any evidence it was created in the US of A?

Anyway, yes, you can disappear even if you're citizen of USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_detainees_at_Guantanam...

and there are countries with even more lax standarts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

Irregular combatants aren't protected by anything. (And regular combatants can be jailed until the conflict is over, which seems to be never.)

Democracies go crazy when they get terror problems and throw out the law books -- see e.g. Germany, Italy, Israel, GB and USA. (I assume that is because voters get upset and votes out politicians that seems to be soft.)

Vanunu published maximum top secret information for a country with not only a terror problem, but an existential threat. Check Gerald Bull for what can happen -- or look what happened in Iran last year, when people complained about a stolen election and the Republican Guard felt threatened.

Edit: Fixed grammar/clarity a little. What I really wanted to say was -- I don't want a job like that. First, security is theoretically interesting but painful to work with in practice. Second, the bureaucracy will be horrible. State jobs without transparency are horribly inefficient and boring. Think bad tasting coffee, no flex, etc.

Edit 2: The nuclear capability was known, but not confirmed (still today, afaik). Also, if someone murders someone that is found out to have terminal cancer -- should they get a shorter punishment...? They must put pressure on Vanunu as a message to the next one talking too much; also game theory 101.

Vanunu just confirmed what was public secret, and Israel doesn't seem to be doing too badly after that. Game theory 101 - if you have Doomsday Device, let the World know about it!

In fact there probably would have been less of a need for Stuxnet, were it not for Vanunu!

"Is there any evidence it was created in the US of A?"

No, not that I know. Then again I don't know if the Russians, Israelis, Chinese or whoever wrote it make their engineers disappear, either (well maybe if they're also secretly plotting a revolt or something, I mean for working on these things).

The others are not people who worked on secret things and were detained/killed/whatever for that fact alone, to cover up that they developed that. That's what I was saying.

It is likely that most of the people who worked on it did not know they were working on it, and may still have no idea.

...But We Can't Say for Sure It Did

Still, thoroughly fascinating.

Did the CIA install their "LAN"? How else would a worm be able to hit something so sensitive? Sneakernet?

Sneakernet from internet-infected machines, via USB drives.

It isn't Kiev, and there's no Major Corto but, still, wow.

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