After reports that the US designed the greatest cyber viruses in history with Flame and Stuxnet, Washington faces a predicament in justifying the duality in its cyber policy and defending its anti-piracy rhetoric. While the US has repeatedly condemned cyber-attacks and hacking when aimed at itself, Washington’s involvement in the coordinated US-Israeli cyber attack on the Natanz nuclear facility raises a troubling problem for the government.
“We’re setting a precedent for other nations,” Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told RT. “And that’s where the real problem lies, because we’ve been criticizing China for allegedly attacking United States companies and the US government, while at the same time we’ve been engaging in the same conduct with other countries.”
Given the US policy of cyber-espionage, some analysts are concerned that this aggressiveness may provoke a reciprocal response. “When you attack, for instance, Iran’s nuclear program, you provide the Iranians with your weapon, your worm, which they can then reverse-engineer, take apart, figure out how it works, turn it around, and send it your way,” said John Feffer, a co-director at Foreign Policy in Focus. Read More:
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20.06, 05:5016 commentsUS, Israel behind Flame virus – officials
The United States and Israel jointly developed the Flame virus, which collected intelligence for a cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear program. This has been confirmed by a number of Western officials familiar with classified data on the effort.
Israel vs IranIran tension
12.06, 02:2636 commentsFlame and Stuxnet: Two cyber weapons unleashed by same master
Those who commissioned the malware Flame also created the deadly Stuxnet, say Kaspersky Labs, who have discovered an identical piece of code in both worms. What appeared to be two unrelated programs are probably part of the same cyberwar campaign.
13.06, 22:398 commentsFlame virus forced to commit suicide
Just days after security experts learned that a malware program named Flame had infected computer networks in Iran and even systems in neighboring Arab countries, its creators have dispatched a “Suicide” command that will kill off the virus.
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