

Did the US write Stuxnet? Deputy Defense Secretary won't deny it - zgorgonola
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/05/27/did-the-us-write-stuxnet-deputy-defense-secretary-wont-deny-it/

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Flenser
_Of course, a refusal to confirm or deny the US's involvement in the Stuxnet
worm isn't an admission. After all, it's possible that Lynn simply doesn't
know if the USA was involved - and doesn't want to be caught on film denying
something which later turns out to be true.

Or it's possible that he's not authorised to deny the US's involvement for
reasons best known to the higher echelons of US politics.

Or maybe even the USA, were involved in Stuxnet but Lynn realises what a
monumental sh-t-storm that would create on the international stage so he
thought better than to confirm it on a CNBC documentary._

Or maybe Lynn knows the US had nothing to do with it, but admitting that would
make it easy to tell when they do have something to hide.

~~~
tokenadult
_Or maybe Lynn knows the US had nothing to do with it, but admitting that
would make it easy to tell when they do have something to hide._

This is indeed a reason that a standard response about national intelligence
issues when questions come from journalists is "We neither confirm nor deny
that . . . " That does a little, at least, to reduce the signal given to
foreign intelligence agencies about the underlying facts by responses to
journalists.

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trotsky
Markoff and the NYT talked about Siemens at Idaho National Labs in February,
Langner said it out loud at TED and Wikipedia puts it straight on the US and
Israel. I'm pretty sure we dropped the question mark a long time ago.

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JonnieCache
Also, check out this excellent 27C3 presentation from Bruce Dang, a microsoft
malware analyst, where he cracks numerous gags about mossad.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOwMW6agpTI>

It's well worth watching anyway, lots of good info on the various exploits
used by stuxnet, down to the opcode level. He's a pretty funny guy as well.

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thristian
If somebody asked _me_ whether I was responsible for one of the most amazing
achievements to date in some field of endeavour, I'd think twice before saying
"no", too.

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nextparadigms
Is that why they ask for more money for "cyber warfare"? So they can use it to
start cyberwars with other countries? I thought the point was to protect
Americans against attacks, not cause them themselves.

~~~
bonzoesc
While I'm not going to defend this instance ethically, using a computer virus
to destroy another country's nuclear capabilities with no loss of life and no
obvious blame a year later is pretty impressive. If a "cyber war" means shit
breaks so you can't fight and nobody dies, I'm fine with that.

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smackfu
Trying to read an awful lot into a "no comment" kind of answer.

