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.
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> 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.