These guys weren't making a paean to beautiful, hardened software to impress their hacker friends. They needed to get the simplest, most reliable and effective code possible out the door in as short a time as possible.
Israel bought itself a few more years of a nuke-free Iran. This is a successful, amazing, even miraculous outcome. Outside of nerd circles, software is measured by results, not architecture or complexity. Beautiful systems that never ship are fine for weekend projects but, uh, we're talking about stopping a nuclear weapons program here. It's a bit like saying that Apollo 11 was bullshit because the accommodations weren't anywhere near as nice as flying on Pan Am.
Stuxnet is the Jack Bauer of software. Rough edges but badass and gets the job done under impossible circumstances.
That's a nice-sounding narrative, but no assessment of Stuxnet indicates that it foreclosed on Iran's nuclear capability, and if it actually is an intelligence service attack on a foreign industrial process, the fact that it's been analyzed in the New York Times seems to suggest that it wasn't very competently done.
A big part of Nate's point in this article is that the virus and DRM communities have known for over a decade how to take programs like this and make them hard to analyze. Nate is pointing out that nothing like that seems to have been done here.
Note that Nate was a key contributor to the as-yet-unbroken† Blu-Ray BD+ DRM scheme, which he worked on in his last couple years at Paul Kocher's infamous Cryptography Research. Here he is going out of his way to cite well known, public sources for methods that would have allowed an intelligence agency to carry out this attack without broadcasting to the world "AIR GAP ALL YOUR NUCLEAR FACILITIES IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR CENTRIFUGES". He's not even suggesting that the authors needed to be world-class content protection experts; only that they would have benefited greatly from a book you can get off the shelf at Barnes and Noble.
The C.W. on Hacker News might be that it makes sense for Iran's enemies to brag about destroying centrifuges without a costly military intervention. But real intelligence services don't brag, if only because they'd like to be able to repeat the same trick against Myanmar or Belarus or Syria or whoever the next proliferation threat is.
† BD+ is interesting because it was designed to be broken easily and then renewed easily; there are numerous individual disk breaks, but so far as I know no break against the whole BD+ scheme that would enable a bypass of any studio update. BD+ may be the first such renewable content protection scheme ever deployed.
Not being heads of state, I don't think either of us is qualified to guess on the 8-dimensional chess being played here. Israel, if they are indeed behind this, is home to some of the brightest computer scientists on the planet. They already pulled off an impressive feat. It's pretty obvious that accomplishing the obfuscation described would not be outside their abilities.
So if they didn't bother, I have a hunch they had their reasons. They could be technical, and that would be the simplest explanation. They could just as well be political or otherwise strategic. I don't know, and neither does anyone else outside of the Israeli and US intelligence communities.
But whatever their reasoning, it's cheap, Monday morning quarterbacking to call an unprecedented and successful operation like Stuxnet embarrassing. Its exposure in the Times has nothing to do with technical competence and everything to do with the fast pace of information flow in the 21st century.
We all know about Operations Opera, Spring of Youth or Wrath of God, it's possible to read about them at length and I'm not sure anyone can dispute the competence on display there.
The US is home to more of the world's brightest computer scientists, but they aren't apportioned evenly throughout all the intelligence services and their contractors. Even presuming that this was carried out by "Mossad" --- and despite breathless reporting in the mainstream media and our inherent narrative bias about cyberwarfare stories, that's still a presumption --- that doesn't mean the best & brightest actually worked on this.
I guess the point is that it is simply impossible to distinguish between a mediocre team and a brilliant one that has chosen to disguise its capabilities.
If that was his point then title of the article shouldn't have been "Stuxnet is embarrassing, not amazing" rather "Here's how Stuxnet could have been even better"
I think "teenagers have written tfiles that are markedly more sophisticated than this virus" justifies the title, but this is a difference of opinion and a classic example of an unproductive HN argument. If you think his title sucks, fine.
According to Western intelligence reports, Russian scientists warned the Kremlin that they could be facing "another Chernobyl" if they were forced to comply with Iran's tight deadline to activate the complex this summer.
I am really confused. I thought the goal of Stuxnet was to delay the production of Iranian enrichment efforts at Natanz. Not to delay a civilian reactor at Bushehr, which is hundreds of miles away.
Assuming the Telegraph report is correct, I don't see how this tells us anything about how effective Stuxnet was at delaying enrichment efforts.
I'll accept anything, but I'll give more credence to some sources than others.
But this seems backward. If there is no evidence that Stuxnet was effective at significantly delaying Iranian production, then people should stop saying that there is. My willingness to accept evidence really shouldn't have anything to do with it.
I'm asking because it's unlikely http://presstv.ir is going host an article saying that Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear bomb has been delayed.
Mossad is saying that Iran doesn't possess the capability to build a nuclear bomb before 2015 and it says attacking Iran would be unwise [1]. Can you think of any reason why they would be saying this unless they believed it to be true?
I'm asking because it's unlikely http://presstv.ir is going host an article saying that Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear bomb has been delayed.
True, but that doesn't mean we should accept every claim as true.
Can you think of any reason why they would be saying this unless they believed it to be true?
What? This doesn't tell us anything about the effectiveness of Stuxnet. Even if they did, intelligence services have a nasty habit of exaggerating their own effectiveness, so I'd find it more credible if that assessment came from another Israeli government organization or another nation's intelligence service altogether.
Even if they did, intelligence services have a nasty habit of exaggerating their own effectiveness
This is where we disagree (I also don't know where this perception comes from). In no way is it in Israel's best interest to do an about-face on their assessment of the time frame for a nuclear Iran unless they had good evidence that indeed Iran's capability to obtain nuclear weapons was severely diminished. Israel has been trying to convince the international community that Iran has been on the cusp of nuclear weapons for the past two years.
You're arguing that the organization Mossad is acting irrationally. What benefit does Mossad exaggerating their effectiveness bring Israel?
Beyond that, this is really basic systems theory. Intelligence service oversight, at least in the US, is very lax. The people doing oversight know a lot less about operations than the people being overseen. So when they screw up, they can spin their nominal bosses so that no one gets fired or goes to jail. It is really hard to keep secret and highly compartmentalized organizations honest. The principal agent problem is a big deal.
Which brings me to my question above: what evidence would you accept? I agree there is no concrete link (just as there is no concrete link between Israel and Stuxnet), but Iran is not going to a) announce their nuclear weapons program and b) detail how far Stuxnet has set them back.
> So when they screw up, they can spin their nominal bosses so that no one gets fired or goes to jail. It is really hard to keep secret and highly compartmentalized organizations honest.
I guess we just disagree on the reasons Mossad is making these statements. It makes no sense to me why Mossad would subject Israel to threat of annihilation in order to make Mossad leaders look good.
Let's assume Mossad isn't behaving pettily. Why would they make these statements unless they believed them to be true?
At the very least, to make a Mossad claim plausible, you'd need to have:
(1) a statement by Mossad issued before Stuxnet was released forecasting that Iran would have a weapon by time T_0
(2) a statement by Mossad issued after Stuxnet was released forecasting that Iran would have a weapon by time T_1
(3) T_1 larger than T_0 by at least a year
(4) a statement by Mossad claiming that there were no significant impediments to progress besides Stuxnet
Again, this all assumes that Mossad is not lying. These are the requirements just as a matter of logic. If you don't have all these elements, you can't claim that Mossad's statements prove that Stuxnet was effective at significantly delaying Iran. At best, you have (2), but without (1), (3), and (4), that proves nothing.
This doesn't add up. Russian scientists are extremely concerned about Iran's lax attitude towards nuclear safety issues (note plural). Against this backdrop we're supposed to be able to read tea leaves from a captured virus and determine the level of damage it did to a shoddily-operated highly-secret massively-complicated nuclear plant?
Head of Mossad and Hillary Clinton both announced:
"that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years."
(from the very NYT article)
And no less than the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
"Iran's enemies used computer code to make "limited" problems for centrifuges involved in uranium enrichment at some of its nuclear sites, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday"
All these stories say the same thing: Natanz suffered a major setback, and various researchers suspect Stuxnet played a role. Here's what I think: Natanz suffered a major setback, and the role Stuxnet played was to provide a smokescreen for the actual sabotage. I have no evidence to support my take, but then, there's not much evidence for the alternative take.
I also think it's plausible that Ahmedinijad (who, remember, is not necessarily a key player in Iranian nuclear politics) or his handlers might play along with a bogus Stuxnet story if it suits the narrative; for instance, if humdrum human sabotage dealt a much greater blow to their plans than has been acknowledged, Iran might prefer the "virus cost us a few months" story to the "we're back to square one" story.
I don't know about your theory, but I agree you do have to notice that Iran wants to be considered a serious threat to increase their global bargaining position. Therefor, they have an incentive to publicize the "sophisticated cyberweapon" angle.
a) Iran send periodic letters as updates to the IAEA
b) The IAEA confirm the reported numbers through on-the-ground inspections.
The reason why Iran had to eventually confirm production problems is because the IAEA was reporting centrifuges being replaced and production numbers steadily declining to a halt.
The best report that ties all this together with Stuxnet is this one:
we're talking about stopping a nuclear weapons program here.
But the unanimous consensus ("with high confidence") of all 16 US intelligence agencies remains that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. I haven't seen that mentioned once in any discussion of this subject here. That's just weird.
I don't follow this stuff closely and obviously have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but it seems likely that everything about this business is stuffed to the gills with propaganda. Is there any credibly objective source anywhere?
But the unanimous consensus ("with high confidence") of
all 16 US intelligence agencies remains that Iran does
not have a nuclear weapons program.
Israel has enough to worry about without Iran developing nuclear weapons. I sincerely doubt they would keep bringing it up if it obviously wasn't the case. They really don't need it for their case. So I would like to see the evidence for your assertion.
I'm not the original poster, but the idea that the US intelligence agencies have collectively decided that Iran's nuclear weapons program is inactive is not some crazy conspiracy theory: the most recent NIE really does say that. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-ira...
Today is the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's historic speech criticising the rise of the American milittary industrial complex. So if you're wondering why Israel would make up a nuclear program that doesn't exist in Iran check it out.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/01...
I also invite you read this document. Specifically section 4.5 starting on page 30."Despite pressure from the US, successive reports by the IAEA have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, past or present."
http://www.transcend.org/tri/downloads/The_Iran_Threat.pdf
I didn't include a link because I don't have time to vet any particular source. But you can take your pick of countless ones: http://www.google.com/search?q=iran+nie.
“Late 1991: In congressional reports and CIA assessments, the United States estimates that there is a ‘high degree of certainty that the government of Iran has acquired all or virtually all of the components required for the construction of two to three nuclear weapons.’ A February 1992 report by the U.S. House of Representatives suggests that these two or three nuclear weapons will be operational between February and April 1992.”
“February 24, 1993: CIA director James Woolsey says that Iran is still 8 to 10 years away from being able to produce its own nuclear weapon, but with assistance from abroad it could become a nuclear power earlier.”
“January 1995: The director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, John Holum, testifies that Iran could have the bomb by 2003.”
“January 5, 1995: U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry says that Iran may be less than five years from building an atomic bomb, although ‘how soon…depends how they go about getting it.’”
“April 29, 1996: Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres says ‘he believes that in four years, they [Iran] may reach nuclear weapons.’”
“October 21, 1998: General Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command, says Iran could have the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons within five years. ‘If I were a betting man,’ he said, ‘I would say they are on track within five years, they would have the capability.’”
“January 17, 2000: A new CIA assessment on Iran’s nuclear capabilities says that the CIA cannot rule out the possibility that Iran may possess nuclear weapons. The assessment is based on the CIA’s admission that it cannot monitor Iran’s nuclear activities with any precision and hence cannot exclude the prospect that Iran may have nuclear weapons.”
You'd think that after consistently making false predictions for decades, people might be a little more careful about this, but no....
The people making these predictions have great interest in making them false. It's quite possible the ETA keeps getting pushed back exactly because of things like Stuxnet.
It's not charitable, it's realistic. I think sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail, like any organization. I don't assume they're completely incompetent when they fail, nor that they are perfect when they succeed.
A project like Iran's would have its own setbacks even in ideal environment. When there are organizations working against it, it's likely to have even more setbacks.
It is also possible that these people are simply irrational or paranoid. Intelligence is always fragmentary and uncertain, but people who are intent on believing that Iran is a deadly enemy about to acquire a vast nuclear arsenal can interpret arbitrary data to justify that belief.
I don't think it's in dispute that Iran has nuclear aspirations, or that it's an enemy of Sunnis and Jews in the Middle East.
Whether they would actually manage to build a bomb and whether they'd actually use it are different questions - but given the Middle East's practices and history, not ones people would tend to ponder too long over.
"Halted in 2003" is how I remember it. How can you push back the progress of something that was halted in 2003 (if it was)? Anyway, (a) I haven't read the report; (b) an objective discussion of this matter seems impossible; (c) I already regret contributing to something that probably shouldn't be on HN; (d) I think I'll stop here.
But the unanimous consensus ("with high confidence") of all 16 US intelligence agencies remains that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program _anymore thanks to stuxnet_
I suspect your question is "how do you know that they're behind stuxnet" for which none of us probably have the answer - or if one of our loyal HN readers does, they're not really likely to divulge it.
The statement quoted in general, though, seems pretty true. That particular agency has a track record for being rather active rather than just quietly/passively gathering intel.
> ... none of us probably have the answer - or if one of our loyal HN readers does, they're not really likely to divulge it.
Exactly, if he works for them and boasts about how efficient they are, it sort of makes them look unprofessional. If he doesn't then how can he say that they are "shipping"? Maybe they waste lots of taxpayers money on projects that never make it out of the door.
From what I know their general policy is to never confirm or deny _anything_.
Comments
Real Mossad Operatives Ship.
These guys weren't making a paean to beautiful, hardened software to impress their hacker friends. They needed to get the simplest, most reliable and effective code possible out the door in as short a time as possible.
Israel bought itself a few more years of a nuke-free Iran. This is a successful, amazing, even miraculous outcome. Outside of nerd circles, software is measured by results, not architecture or complexity. Beautiful systems that never ship are fine for weekend projects but, uh, we're talking about stopping a nuclear weapons program here. It's a bit like saying that Apollo 11 was bullshit because the accommodations weren't anywhere near as nice as flying on Pan Am.
Stuxnet is the Jack Bauer of software. Rough edges but badass and gets the job done under impossible circumstances.
That's a nice-sounding narrative, but no assessment of Stuxnet indicates that it foreclosed on Iran's nuclear capability, and if it actually is an intelligence service attack on a foreign industrial process, the fact that it's been analyzed in the New York Times seems to suggest that it wasn't very competently done.
A big part of Nate's point in this article is that the virus and DRM communities have known for over a decade how to take programs like this and make them hard to analyze. Nate is pointing out that nothing like that seems to have been done here.
Note that Nate was a key contributor to the as-yet-unbroken† Blu-Ray BD+ DRM scheme, which he worked on in his last couple years at Paul Kocher's infamous Cryptography Research. Here he is going out of his way to cite well known, public sources for methods that would have allowed an intelligence agency to carry out this attack without broadcasting to the world "AIR GAP ALL YOUR NUCLEAR FACILITIES IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR CENTRIFUGES". He's not even suggesting that the authors needed to be world-class content protection experts; only that they would have benefited greatly from a book you can get off the shelf at Barnes and Noble.
The C.W. on Hacker News might be that it makes sense for Iran's enemies to brag about destroying centrifuges without a costly military intervention. But real intelligence services don't brag, if only because they'd like to be able to repeat the same trick against Myanmar or Belarus or Syria or whoever the next proliferation threat is.
† BD+ is interesting because it was designed to be broken easily and then renewed easily; there are numerous individual disk breaks, but so far as I know no break against the whole BD+ scheme that would enable a bypass of any studio update. BD+ may be the first such renewable content protection scheme ever deployed.
> real intelligence services don't brag
Not being heads of state, I don't think either of us is qualified to guess on the 8-dimensional chess being played here. Israel, if they are indeed behind this, is home to some of the brightest computer scientists on the planet. They already pulled off an impressive feat. It's pretty obvious that accomplishing the obfuscation described would not be outside their abilities.
So if they didn't bother, I have a hunch they had their reasons. They could be technical, and that would be the simplest explanation. They could just as well be political or otherwise strategic. I don't know, and neither does anyone else outside of the Israeli and US intelligence communities.
But whatever their reasoning, it's cheap, Monday morning quarterbacking to call an unprecedented and successful operation like Stuxnet embarrassing. Its exposure in the Times has nothing to do with technical competence and everything to do with the fast pace of information flow in the 21st century.
We all know about Operations Opera, Spring of Youth or Wrath of God, it's possible to read about them at length and I'm not sure anyone can dispute the competence on display there.
The US is home to more of the world's brightest computer scientists, but they aren't apportioned evenly throughout all the intelligence services and their contractors. Even presuming that this was carried out by "Mossad" --- and despite breathless reporting in the mainstream media and our inherent narrative bias about cyberwarfare stories, that's still a presumption --- that doesn't mean the best & brightest actually worked on this.
I guess the point is that it is simply impossible to distinguish between a mediocre team and a brilliant one that has chosen to disguise its capabilities.
If that was his point then title of the article shouldn't have been "Stuxnet is embarrassing, not amazing" rather "Here's how Stuxnet could have been even better"
I think "teenagers have written tfiles that are markedly more sophisticated than this virus" justifies the title, but this is a difference of opinion and a classic example of an unproductive HN argument. If you think his title sucks, fine.
Israel bought itself a few more years of a nuke-free Iran.
Do we actually know that? Is there any evidence that this delayed the program by "years" rather than a few months?
Seems like they really messed them up.
According to Western intelligence reports, Russian scientists warned the Kremlin that they could be facing "another Chernobyl" if they were forced to comply with Iran's tight deadline to activate the complex this summer.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8262...
I am really confused. I thought the goal of Stuxnet was to delay the production of Iranian enrichment efforts at Natanz. Not to delay a civilian reactor at Bushehr, which is hundreds of miles away.
Assuming the Telegraph report is correct, I don't see how this tells us anything about how effective Stuxnet was at delaying enrichment efforts.
What evidence would you accept
I'll accept anything, but I'll give more credence to some sources than others.
But this seems backward. If there is no evidence that Stuxnet was effective at significantly delaying Iranian production, then people should stop saying that there is. My willingness to accept evidence really shouldn't have anything to do with it.
I'm asking because it's unlikely http://presstv.ir is going host an article saying that Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear bomb has been delayed.
Mossad is saying that Iran doesn't possess the capability to build a nuclear bomb before 2015 and it says attacking Iran would be unwise [1]. Can you think of any reason why they would be saying this unless they believed it to be true?
[1. http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/01/07/132525.html]
I'm asking because it's unlikely http://presstv.ir is going host an article saying that Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear bomb has been delayed.
True, but that doesn't mean we should accept every claim as true.
Can you think of any reason why they would be saying this unless they believed it to be true?
What? This doesn't tell us anything about the effectiveness of Stuxnet. Even if they did, intelligence services have a nasty habit of exaggerating their own effectiveness, so I'd find it more credible if that assessment came from another Israeli government organization or another nation's intelligence service altogether.
Even if they did, intelligence services have a nasty habit of exaggerating their own effectiveness
This is where we disagree (I also don't know where this perception comes from). In no way is it in Israel's best interest to do an about-face on their assessment of the time frame for a nuclear Iran unless they had good evidence that indeed Iran's capability to obtain nuclear weapons was severely diminished. Israel has been trying to convince the international community that Iran has been on the cusp of nuclear weapons for the past two years.
You're arguing that the organization Mossad is acting irrationally. What benefit does Mossad exaggerating their effectiveness bring Israel?
You're arguing that the organization Mossad is acting irrationally.
No, I'm arguing that Mossad's claims about when Iran will have a weapon tell us nothing about the effectiveness of Stuxnet. This is a matter of logic.
I also don't know where this perception comes from
Reading books about intelligence services...like Legacy of Ashes http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/038...
Beyond that, this is really basic systems theory. Intelligence service oversight, at least in the US, is very lax. The people doing oversight know a lot less about operations than the people being overseen. So when they screw up, they can spin their nominal bosses so that no one gets fired or goes to jail. It is really hard to keep secret and highly compartmentalized organizations honest. The principal agent problem is a big deal.
> This is a matter of logic.
Which brings me to my question above: what evidence would you accept? I agree there is no concrete link (just as there is no concrete link between Israel and Stuxnet), but Iran is not going to a) announce their nuclear weapons program and b) detail how far Stuxnet has set them back.
> So when they screw up, they can spin their nominal bosses so that no one gets fired or goes to jail. It is really hard to keep secret and highly compartmentalized organizations honest.
I guess we just disagree on the reasons Mossad is making these statements. It makes no sense to me why Mossad would subject Israel to threat of annihilation in order to make Mossad leaders look good.
Let's assume Mossad isn't behaving pettily. Why would they make these statements unless they believed them to be true?
At the very least, to make a Mossad claim plausible, you'd need to have:
(1) a statement by Mossad issued before Stuxnet was released forecasting that Iran would have a weapon by time T_0
(2) a statement by Mossad issued after Stuxnet was released forecasting that Iran would have a weapon by time T_1
(3) T_1 larger than T_0 by at least a year
(4) a statement by Mossad claiming that there were no significant impediments to progress besides Stuxnet
Again, this all assumes that Mossad is not lying. These are the requirements just as a matter of logic. If you don't have all these elements, you can't claim that Mossad's statements prove that Stuxnet was effective at significantly delaying Iran. At best, you have (2), but without (1), (3), and (4), that proves nothing.
To add another source, John Bolton said last August that Israel had 'a week' to attack Iran as the nuclear fuel would be ready to load at that point:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/17/israel-weeks-end-...
That timeframe has now been extended from 'a week' to 2014+ (according to the NYT quoting both Mossad chief and Clinton)
What happen between these two statements to shift the timeframe estimates so dramatically? Stuxnet.
1) According to the Wikileaks cables, Israel's spy agency Mossad's latest claims foreshadowed that Iran would be nuclear armed by 2011.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/159244.html
2) Iran not able to build nuclear bomb before 2015
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/01/07/132525.html
3) 2015 > 2011
4) Israel refuses to take credit for stuxnet. So this is impossible.
This doesn't add up. Russian scientists are extremely concerned about Iran's lax attitude towards nuclear safety issues (note plural). Against this backdrop we're supposed to be able to read tea leaves from a captured virus and determine the level of damage it did to a shoddily-operated highly-secret massively-complicated nuclear plant?
The source on the disruption to the nuclear program wasn't from analyzing the worm, it was from:
Three UN diplomats who were sources to an AP story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101122/ap_on_re_eu/iran_nuclear...
A "former top IAEA official":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11...
Iran stopped all uranium production, according to official IAEA report:
http://www.isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Ir...
IAEA again:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/8378260/iran-tempor...
Head of Mossad and Hillary Clinton both announced:
"that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years."
(from the very NYT article)
And no less than the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
"Iran's enemies used computer code to make "limited" problems for centrifuges involved in uranium enrichment at some of its nuclear sites, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday"
http://israelinsider.net/profiles/blogs/ahmadinejad-those-wh...
but he would say 'limited', wouldn't he. Afterall two weeks earlier they were vehemently denying that Stuxnet had any effect.
All these stories say the same thing: Natanz suffered a major setback, and various researchers suspect Stuxnet played a role. Here's what I think: Natanz suffered a major setback, and the role Stuxnet played was to provide a smokescreen for the actual sabotage. I have no evidence to support my take, but then, there's not much evidence for the alternative take.
I also think it's plausible that Ahmedinijad (who, remember, is not necessarily a key player in Iranian nuclear politics) or his handlers might play along with a bogus Stuxnet story if it suits the narrative; for instance, if humdrum human sabotage dealt a much greater blow to their plans than has been acknowledged, Iran might prefer the "virus cost us a few months" story to the "we're back to square one" story.
I don't know about your theory, but I agree you do have to notice that Iran wants to be considered a serious threat to increase their global bargaining position. Therefor, they have an incentive to publicize the "sophisticated cyberweapon" angle.
The IAEA report numbers are from two sources:
a) Iran send periodic letters as updates to the IAEA b) The IAEA confirm the reported numbers through on-the-ground inspections.
The reason why Iran had to eventually confirm production problems is because the IAEA was reporting centrifuges being replaced and production numbers steadily declining to a halt.
The best report that ties all this together with Stuxnet is this one:
http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/did-stuxnet-take-...
Real Mossad Operatives Ship
Someone needs to do that t-shirt, with the Stuxnet code on the back. I'd get one... although I'd probably be too afraid to wear it :-)
Just pointing out that you would be wearing a t-shirt of an agency that doesn't mind assassinating and torturing people.
It reminds me of the Israeli treatment of the humanitarian supply ships that tried to help Gaza.
Afraid of whom?
I've never heard of someone afraid to be pro-Israel/Mossad, only the opposite.
That statement is extremely location-dependent.
Exactly! The fact that the anti-Mossad regime is so secret is what makes it even scarier. The less proof we can find, the more compelling it becomes!
we're talking about stopping a nuclear weapons program here.
But the unanimous consensus ("with high confidence") of all 16 US intelligence agencies remains that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. I haven't seen that mentioned once in any discussion of this subject here. That's just weird.
I don't follow this stuff closely and obviously have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but it seems likely that everything about this business is stuffed to the gills with propaganda. Is there any credibly objective source anywhere?
I'm not the original poster, but the idea that the US intelligence agencies have collectively decided that Iran's nuclear weapons program is inactive is not some crazy conspiracy theory: the most recent NIE really does say that. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-ira...
Today is the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's historic speech criticising the rise of the American milittary industrial complex. So if you're wondering why Israel would make up a nuclear program that doesn't exist in Iran check it out. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/01...
Here is a good debate concerning the issue of trusting Iran that they have no nuclear program. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVZGREqdfZ8
I also invite you read this document. Specifically section 4.5 starting on page 30."Despite pressure from the US, successive reports by the IAEA have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, past or present." http://www.transcend.org/tri/downloads/The_Iran_Threat.pdf
Source please.
I didn't include a link because I don't have time to vet any particular source. But you can take your pick of countless ones: http://www.google.com/search?q=iran+nie.
Yet. The unanimous consensus was that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapons program, but that it was attempting to establish one.
The purpose of Stuxnex was to push back Iran's progress by a few years.
The purpose of Stuxnex was to push back Iran's progress by a few years.
Ah, but why bother? Iran's nuclear weapons are always just a few years away, in the future: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/bad-intelligence-but-in-which...
“Late 1991: In congressional reports and CIA assessments, the United States estimates that there is a ‘high degree of certainty that the government of Iran has acquired all or virtually all of the components required for the construction of two to three nuclear weapons.’ A February 1992 report by the U.S. House of Representatives suggests that these two or three nuclear weapons will be operational between February and April 1992.”
“February 24, 1993: CIA director James Woolsey says that Iran is still 8 to 10 years away from being able to produce its own nuclear weapon, but with assistance from abroad it could become a nuclear power earlier.”
“January 1995: The director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, John Holum, testifies that Iran could have the bomb by 2003.”
“January 5, 1995: U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry says that Iran may be less than five years from building an atomic bomb, although ‘how soon…depends how they go about getting it.’”
“April 29, 1996: Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres says ‘he believes that in four years, they [Iran] may reach nuclear weapons.’”
“October 21, 1998: General Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command, says Iran could have the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons within five years. ‘If I were a betting man,’ he said, ‘I would say they are on track within five years, they would have the capability.’”
“January 17, 2000: A new CIA assessment on Iran’s nuclear capabilities says that the CIA cannot rule out the possibility that Iran may possess nuclear weapons. The assessment is based on the CIA’s admission that it cannot monitor Iran’s nuclear activities with any precision and hence cannot exclude the prospect that Iran may have nuclear weapons.”
You'd think that after consistently making false predictions for decades, people might be a little more careful about this, but no....
The people making these predictions have great interest in making them false. It's quite possible the ETA keeps getting pushed back exactly because of things like Stuxnet.
That's a remarkably charitable view of intelligence service/government statements given what we now know of Iraq's capabilities.
It's not charitable, it's realistic. I think sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail, like any organization. I don't assume they're completely incompetent when they fail, nor that they are perfect when they succeed.
A project like Iran's would have its own setbacks even in ideal environment. When there are organizations working against it, it's likely to have even more setbacks.
It is also possible that these people are simply irrational or paranoid. Intelligence is always fragmentary and uncertain, but people who are intent on believing that Iran is a deadly enemy about to acquire a vast nuclear arsenal can interpret arbitrary data to justify that belief.
I don't think it's in dispute that Iran has nuclear aspirations, or that it's an enemy of Sunnis and Jews in the Middle East.
Whether they would actually manage to build a bomb and whether they'd actually use it are different questions - but given the Middle East's practices and history, not ones people would tend to ponder too long over.
Unfortunately this sort of success results in publicly perceived failure. For more examples, see y2k.
Maybe the predictions were true, until somebody made them false?
"Halted in 2003" is how I remember it. How can you push back the progress of something that was halted in 2003 (if it was)? Anyway, (a) I haven't read the report; (b) an objective discussion of this matter seems impossible; (c) I already regret contributing to something that probably shouldn't be on HN; (d) I think I'll stop here.
But the unanimous consensus ("with high confidence") of all 16 US intelligence agencies remains that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program _anymore thanks to stuxnet_
FTFY
I think that is quite inconclusive that Israel is the source.
If it is, it's likelier that Stuxnet is the creation of Unit 8200 rather than the Mossad.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200
> Real Mossad Operatives Ship.
How do you know that?
I suspect your question is "how do you know that they're behind stuxnet" for which none of us probably have the answer - or if one of our loyal HN readers does, they're not really likely to divulge it.
The statement quoted in general, though, seems pretty true. That particular agency has a track record for being rather active rather than just quietly/passively gathering intel.
> ... none of us probably have the answer - or if one of our loyal HN readers does, they're not really likely to divulge it.
Exactly, if he works for them and boasts about how efficient they are, it sort of makes them look unprofessional. If he doesn't then how can he say that they are "shipping"? Maybe they waste lots of taxpayers money on projects that never make it out of the door.
From what I know their general policy is to never confirm or deny _anything_.