sloth unleashed

The Stuxnet computer worm used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program was planted by a double agent working for Israel. The agent used a booby-trapped memory stick to infect machines deep inside the Natanz nuclear facility, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Once the memory stick was infected, Stuxnet was able to infiltrate the Natanz network when a user did nothing more than click on an icon in Windows, ISSSource reported. They cited former and serving US intelligence officials who requested anonymity because of their proximity to the investigations. Covert operators from Israel and the US wanted to use a saboteur on the ground to spread the infection to insure the worm burrowed into the most vulnerable machines in the system, reporter Richard Sale added.

The double agent was probably a member of an Iranian dissident group, possibly from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq group. This group is believed to be behind the assassinations of key Iranian nuclear scientists. In October, a huge blast destroyed an underground site near the town of Khorramabad in western Iran that housed most of Iran’s Shehab-3 medium-range missiles capable of reaching Israel and Iraq. Former and current US officials told ISSSource that the MEK was behind the attack, and one of the officials said “computer manipulations” caused the blast. “Given the seriousness of the impact on Iran’s (nuclear) program, we believe it took a human agent to spread the virus,” the source told the publication…