A Finnish-Chinese Connection For Stuxnet? 113
Lingenfelter writes "I recently wrote a white paper entitled 'Dragons, Tigers, Pearls, and Yellowcake' in which I proposed four alternative scenarios for the Stuxnet worm other than the commonly held assumption that it was Israel or the US targeting Iran's Bushehr or Natanz facilities."
I did it. (Score:3)
My paper is coming (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not sure I follow... how does version control fit into this?
Overthinking it (Score:5, Insightful)
Israel is (by far) the most nervous about Iran's nuclear program, and already had one pre-emptive attack on a nuclear plant under it's belt that (in their worldview) was a resounding success and is a point of national pride.
So one of the drives targeted by stuxnet is manufactured in China...I hate to state the obvious, but what isn't?
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Wasn't there a wikileaks cable about Israel preparing a cyberattack on Iran?
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Not really:
http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/241927,cablegate-dsd-unprepared-for-cyberwar.aspx [securecomputing.net.au]
The group also discussed Israeli nervousness over Iran's nuclear programme, the ONA expressing interest in Fort's and INR's assessments on Israeli "red lines" and the "likelihood of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities".
Source:
http://images.theage.com.au/file/2010/12/15/2096934/Cables.htm [theage.com.au]
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And an iranian nuclear scientist has been killed recently:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11860928 [bbc.co.uk]
And the article mentions that another one was killed at the beginning of this year.
It's more efficient to kill scientists than to use virus.
This is very similar to Mossad's ways http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad [wikipedia.org]
As usual, Iran blames Israel, and Israel blames Iran for this murder.
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You can only kill the scientists and bomb the facilities you know about; a virus can go anywhere.
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Stuxnet has been found throughout the world, you make it sound like they only found it in one facility.
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Re:Overthinking it (Score:4, Informative)
I guess the current way many finnish industrial machine manufacturing goes is that the first models are machined and done in finland and then at least parts manufacture is subcontracted from somewhere cheaper, also we don't have chip fabs in finland so naturally a lot of the parts need to be imports anyways. and another thing that's done on contract by finnish firms by finns is to go to a project site and fix up the mess that the export chinese workmen haven't been able to fix.
the finnish connection is an interesting one because there's plenty of people in finland who could've written stuxnet by themselfs(and access to fresh exploits and the means to look for exploits themselfs) and possibly had the information too - and quite low probability of getting connected to it by anyone else. but it's an obvious one that's hard to prove so it's just that it's targeting some finnish connection hardware that's the connection to finland. the motivation in that case wouldn't have been money, fame or such, it would be that it's just such a sweet target and even if caught criminal chargers would've been extremely hard to press(and even condemning it morally would have sparked a lot of discussion, after all stuxnet was a more civil way to slow the progress there than bombing some scientists).
finland does a lot of trade with many shady countries, nobody gives a rats ass you see(about what finland does and with whom) and economy isn't exactly booming so extra business is extra business, that's not to say that the iranians maybe hadn't lied about what they're going to use the machinery for - notice that had they been used for something else than what the iranians (now apparently confirmedly) were using them for then stuxnet would have done nothing :). they could've used them to run some fat seperators but nooo, had to use for some zero economical output work.
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I tend to agree, although the scientists that died of high velocity lead poisoning does sound like something Israel could and would do, very effectively. The problem with the US is that we are always too obvious, try to be "loved", and overly open about stuff like this. We save the secret spying and covert operations on our own citizens.
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IMHO this also sends a message: "We've been peeing in your centrifuges for months without even having to leave our offices."
Mossad already had the ninja assassin rep, now they get to be ninja assassin hackers.
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China has a lot to gain by doing this:
1: Slowing down Iran's nuclear ambitions is in China's interests because when Iran does have the bomb, who knows what direction it may be sent.
2: Having Stuxnet blamed on the US/Israel is a good thing for China -- the more countries hostile to the west, the better.
3: If a conflict does break out, China could easily make a deal with Iran by offering to have the Red Guard protect the country in return for oil rights. This would ensure them a strong strategic base in t
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Bruce Schneirer debunked the sociopath theory reasonably well when he observed that this tool is very specifically focused. If this tool had been built with sociopathic/antisocial intent it would have f'ed-up way, way more public infrastructure world-wide.
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Interesting, but I find it difficult to envision China offering to protect Iran in this way, it would raise the ire of the entire world, including their best customer, the USA. No, China tends to stay a bit less involved in the public light. If China volunteered to protect Iran, which would be seen as helping them develop nuclear weapons, I'm pretty sure we would have B-52s carpeting the place as an emergency effort, within 72 hours. They can get there in about 18 to 20 hours with direct flight with mid-
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Actually just about everybody is worried about Iran's nuclear program. Russia has it's own problems with muslim extremists and Iran and Russia are natural enemies that for now are cooperating. They do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons they just want to sell them stuff.
India doesn't really want an extremist Islamic nuclear power that could become allies with an extremist Pakistan.
Throw in France, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Italy, and all the nations near Iran and you have a long list. Frankly you can make
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Yeah, 'cos Shia Iran spends all its time cooperating with Sunni/Salafist jihadi groups.
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"Israel is (by far) the most nervous about Iran's nuclear program, and already had one pre-emptive attack on a nuclear plant under it's belt that (in their worldview) was a resounding success and is a point of national pride."
Actually, it's done two. It bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq and '81, and it bombed the Syrian nuclear installation in 2007.
But here's the point, when you consider that Iran is no more a threat to Israel than Iraq was then, and than Syria was in 2007, then why do you think if Israel i
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The Military Option: Bushehr is not Osirak [wikileaks.ch]:
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Its like you're wondering why anyone would ever improve their tactics. Why on earth did we start dropping bombs from planes, when charging head on into machine gun fire worked so well for the past 6000 years? Why on earth did we start using computers, when typewriters were cheaper and more available?
Stuxnet is an awesome weapon. It continues to screw up the centrifuges. They have no way of keeping their systems clean. No one died. No human casualties. No one's that ticked off at Israel, except Iran who has
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Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
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Germans? I'm pretty sure it was the Persians.
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"Stuxnet is an awesome weapon. It continues to screw up the centrifuges. They have no way of keeping their systems clean."
No it doesn't, this is the point. At the end of the day you can always just bring in clean computing hardware, or completely restart from scratch with the software. This is why, at worst, it delays things, and does nothing long term to stop the nuclear programming. It doesn't damage the hardware, it merely alters the operation of it, and if the hardware is intact- the most expensive and
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Ohh... didn't pay attention to the source.
Well, Maybe this isn't true. But it might be. You never know with fox.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/09/despite-iranian-claims-stuxnet-worm-causing-nuclear-havoc/#ixzz17fEbOlq4 [foxnews.com]
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I think you have the Military confused with the Mossad. Military always wants cred. Intel Agency wants you to have a doubt. Having that little bit of doubt makes you hesitant, giving them a little bit more of an edge.
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I guess what I am trying to say is that IMHO when Israel does something, they WANT you to know they did it. For this virus, someone wanted to remain somewhat anonymous.
But everyone (except notably the submitter) thinks it's Israel. Therefore, they win this round. The Israelis are indeed quite nuanced and capable of a wide range of 'interventions': Blowing up people with cell phones, disappearing people, generic spying, high seas piracy and more.
It doesn't just have to go kaboom. Maybe the fighter jocks get bonus points for air raids but it's always good to have access to a deep toolkit.
Rather basic question (Score:2, Interesting)
On the presumption that this is some electronic device with a user-modifiable firmware (how else would the worm be able to modify it?) - what would stop Iran from taking an unaffected piece, dumping the firmware, and re-uploading it?
Do a clean reinstall of Windows, and you're set to go.
Is there something I am missing?
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Nope, seems about right. But you can reinfect a PC by inserting an infected USB key and viewing the contents, so until you know the infection-vectors (which took a while to discover) you'd have difficulty staying clean.
Stuxnet was made to stay undetected as long as possible - it only mucks about with attached drives (rapidly spinning them up and down) at long intervals and for short periods. So instead of a room full of exploding centrifuges, you get an abnormally high failure-rate. It even records sensor d
Re:Rather basic question (Score:4, Informative)
On the presumption that this is some electronic device with a user-modifiable firmware (how else would the worm be able to modify it?) - what would stop Iran from taking an unaffected piece, dumping the firmware, and re-uploading it?
Do a clean reinstall of Windows, and you're set to go.
Is there something I am missing?
Here's what you're missing:
We originally only had two basic kinds of memory chips, RAM which is volatile, and ROM which was non-volatile. Then someone came up with a new chip that could be 'flashed', that is you could change the data values once but then it became completely non-volitile and was no longer updatable (WORM- Write Once Read Many).
These were the first flashable chips, and had a finite amount of space to use for updates since once you wrote new data, it was there for good.
Well we have largely moved away from WORM technology on most consumer devices, since it's a lot better to have a chip which is largely non-volitie but can still be updated so you don't run out of space or risk totally ruining the chip.
But a lot of high-dollar embedded devices still use WORM chips. Why? Because devices like the ones in question are not only expensive in terms of the raw hardware, but also cost a fortune in license fees for the software which runs them. And the last thing they want is for someone to purchase the equipment from someone else (used or stolen, for example) and run their own software on it- the company makes nothing. So they use chips which are based on WORM technology, which means that a malicious (or bugged) update could easily prevent any further updates (upgrades or downgrades, it's all updates)... which would require replacing the chip. And in most cases, it would be an entire board not just a single chip.
So that's basically a headache for any legit operation which has a support contract with the manufacturer (which they WILL have, always), they ship it back and the maker ships a new one. Or maybe just sends a tech to the site with a spare. Which is all fine and dandy when you're not a country under international embargo, and has multiple powerful nations working to prevent you from getting these machines in the first place. But when you are a 'rogue state' or whatever we're calling them today, getting a replacement chip with the proper software on it is probably even more difficult than just getting an entirely new unit on the black market.
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Stuxnet is quite the nasty piece of malware. There isnt anything simple about it.
This is Symantec's summary:
Stuxnet is a threat targeting a specific industrial control system likely in Iran, such as a gas pipeline or power
plant. The ultimate goal of Stuxnet is to sabotage that facility by reprogramming programmable logic controllers
(PLCs) to operate as the attackers intend them to, most likely out of their specified boundaries.
Stuxnet was discovered in July, but is confirmed to have existed at least one yea
Chinas viewpoint on Iran and nukes (Score:5, Interesting)
Its already well established(and the leaked cables support this) that many of the other countries in the area are quite wary of Iran and its ambitions, and a nuclear armed Iran would give the US and these countries a rationale for increasing US presence and influence in the region. China does not see this as being beneficial in the long run as it sees the US as its biggest, and really only, potential rival. Therefore they are against a nuclear armed Iran but on the other hand Iran is one of Chinas biggest oil suppliers and it really does not want to piss them off. So Chinas position is to try to prevent Iran from getting nukes while at the same time looking like the `good guy`. They often times abstain when it comes time to vote on Iranian sanctions in the security counsel. This essentially gives them an out, they can continue to see sanctions and pressure put on the Iranian nuke program without looking like a bad guy to Iran. They can always tell the Iranians that they were worried about vague and unspecified reprecussions if asked why they didnt vote no.
Chinas viewpoint on the US. (Score:1)
Its already well established(and the leaked cables support this) that many of the other countries in the area are quite wary of Iran and its ambitions, and a nuclear armed Iran would give the US and these countries a rationale for increasing US presence and influence in the region. China does not see this as being beneficial in the long run as it sees the US as its biggest, and really only, potential rival.
A rival that is not only it's biggest market, who if it went bankrupt would render all the debt China purchased worthless.
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Not really, a large part of it maybe, but much of the debt has been translated into proper ownership.
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> China does not see this as being beneficial in the long run as it sees the US as its biggest, and really only, potential rival.
That feels like some kind of logical fallacy to me - it's assuming China is really smart about one thing but really stupid about a bunch of other things (even when there've been clues that China is indeed aware of the other things). China has many rivals besides the US - India, Russia, maybe the EU, maybe Japan. They clearly know this, and clearly plan for it.
I bring this up be
AND OF COURSE, E.T. (Score:1)
Because they have visited, and some have stayed on, as well. They are amongst us now. Aliens. Believe it !! Or not. I won't tell. They'll lock me up and throw away the key this time !!
RTFA? (Score:1)
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A spectacularly worthless summary.
And even in TFA you have to click through three different links just to download the white paper.
It's about oil and coal (Score:5, Interesting)
Iran not only gets money but also Chinese coal in exchange for their crude oil that they sell to China. Now when Iran finishes their reactors, Iran needs less coal for making electric energy. But China will still need the oil. Thus they have to pay more for the oil. Even worse, the less coal Iran needs the less dependent they become on China, so they are more likely to sell thei oil to other countries.
Sabotaging the nuclear plants of Iran is a cheap way to sustain the co-dependancy between Iran and China.
Re:It's about oil and coal (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that is a tempting hypothesis.
But I'm going with Occam's razor on this one.
Who has the most to lose should Iran get nukes? Israel. Who has the most interest in the region? Israel. Who has the cash and the tech know-how? Who has a close relationship with a more powerful country with a _big_ interest in stopping Iran? Israel
This is not about nukes (Score:1)
China does not care about trade embargoes! (Score:1)
I never said independet (Score:1)
The reason China may export coal to Iran is not because they need to make money selling coal, but because they have to sell it to Iran in order to get the Iranian oil.
If Lingenfelter is right (Score:2, Interesting)
This will go against the entire business mantra, but if he is right the West really needs to pull back manufacturing of electronic devices and make more serious efforts to combat Chinese electronic warfare, because in this case they were either incompetent
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I believe that the "AIDS is a CIA plot" bullshit started as Soviet propaganda in the eighties and evolved into the current set of conspiracy theories.
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I believe the '"AIDS is a CIA plot" is Soviet propaganda' rumour started as a Belgian misinformation campaign in '93.
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Thanks - I was going to post similarly. I haven't heard a peep in any med lit about H1N1 being anything other than a natural variant. Maybe OP heard it at the doctor's office but you hear a lot at the doctor's office that is worth a second opinion.
Re:If Lingenfelter is right (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously?
If it was an escaped Chinese military virus wouldn't it have been alot more deadly?
Also, it was traced to a pig farm in Mexico.
Now please coat your tin foil suit with tungsten carbide.You're gonna need it.
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Seriously? If it was an escaped Chinese military virus wouldn't it have been alot more deadly?
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There seems to be a fair number of medical doctors who suspect that "swine flu" is actually a Chinese military virus that escaped from a lab.
Stop. Right. There.
"Medical doctors"? What are they basing their suspicions on?
You made this up or were fooled.
Here's a question... (Score:2)
Interesting article, which (indirectly) raises an even more interesting question:
If China was behind the StuxNet worm, why would they risk undoing all of their careful origin-obfuscation work by subsequently carrying out two high-risk meat-space operations against high-level Iranian engineers?
One possibility is that they simply didn't . Once the worm came to light, some other intelligence agency with a more direct way of handling things may have decided to seize the opportunity to increase the worm's li
Yet another daft conspiracy theory (Score:1)
A conspiracy theory, particularly one which is as convoluted and as baseless as this is, does not gain any magic credibility if the loony that devised it happens to write it down in a document which then proceeds to refer to it as a "white paper". I understand his desperate need to sell his little pet conspiracy theory on the authoritativeness of the "white paper" label alone but that doesn't make it any more true.
Finland? Not entirely implausible (Score:2)
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Endless loop. (Score:2)
Iran needs nuclear weapons to be sure US and Israel wont invade. Those two knows that the minute Iran has nuclear weapons as a deterrent, they cant invade. This is an endless loop where Usrael says invasion is the only solution because Iran is trying to get nuclears to deter an invasion.
The only really path to getting Iran off the path to nuclears are that the US and Israel promises to not invade Iran. Since thats their goal they wont.
One can hope China will step in and assure the freedom of Iran from US/Is
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Iran needs nuclear weapons to be sure US and Israel wont invade. Those two knows that the minute Iran has nuclear weapons as a deterrent, they cant invade. This is an endless loop where Usrael says invasion is the only solution because Iran is trying to get nuclears to deter an invasion.
The only really path to getting Iran off the path to nuclears are that the US and Israel promises to not invade Iran.
If they're that serious about invasion, US and Israel would invade before Iran has their nukes ready. What they're afraid of is that if they don't invade, Iran will simply launch the nukes at Israel, because that's the kind of guy Ahmadinejad is. Or seems to be, at least. The nukes might force the US and Israel to do something against Iran even when they'd rather not.
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I see you have eaten and digested the propaganda very well. Iran is not a crazy banana republic with raving mad leaders.
The US and Israel wants an excuse to invade, just as the lies about Iraq WMD was used to fool the world. It doesnt matter if Iran stops its (for now) civilian nuclear program, some other excuse will be made. Iran sadly needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from the US and Israel.
Do you seriously think Iran would launch a first strike at Israel knowing it would turn every square inch of I
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Iran is not a crazy banana republic with raving mad leaders.
Yes it is. Iran has a lot of very reasonable, smart, educated and enlightened people, but its leaders are stark raving mad. Get rid of the theocracy and have some real elections for a change. Go back to the democracy of before 1953.
The US and Israel wants an excuse to invade, just as the lies about Iraq WMD was used to fool the world.
The US would sell its own mother to not have to invade Iran. They're already embroiled in two neverending wars. They don't want a third.
It doesnt matter if Iran stops its (for now) civilian nuclear program, some other excuse will be made. Iran sadly needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from the US and Israel.
How is Israel going to attack Iran? The only reason for Israel to ever do so is if Iran is a direct threat to Israel's continued existence. Isra
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But the threat of attack by Israel and/or the USA (and the idiot "sanctions") is very useful to the rulers of Iran (Ahmadinejad is far from being a dictator). They need an external enemy to blame for all their internal problems.
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It's hard to say that the US isn't at least partially to blame for Iran's problems. It was a democracy until 1953, when, with the help of the CIA and the ayatollahs, the government was overthrown and the Shah placed in power. And it went downhill from there.
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We definitely made the bed and now we're stuck lying in it. Good point. But it still doesn't un-crazy the Iranian theocracy. Crazy US foreign policy gave them the vehicle to come to power but those nutjobs are doing fine being crazy all on their own now.
Ditto for Afghanistan come to think of it (twice there - first in the 80's and now again with Karzai). The more things change, the more they stay the same..
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We definitely made the bed and now we're stuck lying in it. Good point. But it still doesn't un-crazy the Iranian theocracy. Crazy US foreign policy gave them the vehicle to come to power but those nutjobs are doing fine being crazy all on their own now.
Well put. That's exactly my point. I do think overthrowing governments, especially from the outside, has a tendency to bring the crazies out, though.
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Don't be ridiculous - after all the effort we put in to overthrowing it?
Well, it's a good thing he's not at the helm then, isn't it.
You do know he has no control over foreign or military policy?
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Those last round of elections were free and fair? Ahmadinejad sure sounds like a nut job whenever he opens his mouth in public.
Don't get me wrong, I agree there's tremendous media bias about Iran. But the Iranian gov't seems pretty loco. The US gov't up until recently seemed pretty loco to me as well.
The Iranian police and paramilitary stomping on civilians during a peaceful demonstration looked a lot more to me like Burma than the US or Europe. I marched peacefully against the (second) Iraq war and no one
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Are you serious about Israel invading Iran? Have you ever looked at a map?
If the US were to invade, there wouldn't be any Israeli involvement because none would be needed or wanted.
As for Israel invading? That's seriously daft. Israel's population is less than a tenth of Iran's and they are separated by 500 miles and two sovereign nations.
Israel has about as much ability to invade Iran as the state of Iowa.
If Iran IS invaded, they won't be getting any Chinese assistance for pretty much the same reason.
Realpolitik (Score:2)
USB delivered. (Score:3)
China would be far more likely to imbed this in the motherboard or nic than to rely on USB as a delivery vehicle.
Stuxnet and Wikileaks (Score:3)
Stuxnet Israel Wikileaks connection that was anounced in the last couple of days
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+1 for hilarious (Score:2)
Did you get the tungsten-carbide coated tinfoil idea from me?
Either way, how about going into business together?
There's money to be made from paranoid people..
Glenn Beck and talk radio do the prep work for us and we do Cha-ching!
Re:+1 for hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
I just pictured Glenn Beck proudly and slowly walking onto the set of his show in an elaborate tungsten-carbide-tinfoil suit, complete with a samurai-style helmet and a US flag strapped to his back.
"Today friends, I am immune to the electromagnetic radiation of the liberal media, and the silent-but-deadly kinetic impact of their hybrid cars. I can think freely and walk the streets without fear. Bring it on, Obama, if that IS your real name"
XD
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That is actually more of a Chinese date format which is the format frankly that makes the most sense
It is the ISO date format: YYYY-MM-DD. It is the only acceptable standard date format for most uses.
People ignorant of modern standards, or incapble of adapting to changing times, still use some weird and archaic date formats, gifting us with ambiguous nonsense like 10/6/8.
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I have never understood why the US use MM-DD-YYYY...gosh darn it is retarded and backwards and arbitrary.
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what is worse is that we also use DD-MM-YYYY at the same time, so two identical looking dates may have a different value, so you always have to know what the format is to correctly interpret a little less than half our dates.
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That the date of death (19790509 or 9th of May 1979) for a jewish martyr, lynched during the iranian islamic revolution is hardcoded in a registry key used by Stuxnet. QED
Ok, I'm convinced: it wasn't the Israelis.
Two things convince me of that: the unbelievably lame little astro-turf campaign going on here with AC's all repeating "I'm gonna go with the OBVIOUS on this one" without one shred of actual evidence to back it up; and this particular claim that a group as canny as the Israelis would effectively sign the worm with a value that points back to them.
The astro-turfer's efforts are simply racist, no different from the police looking for a convenient person of the corre
It was Nixie (Score:1)
The FSM did it. (Score:3, Insightful)
You leave a dog alone with a steak. When you later come back, the steak is eaten.
Who ate the steak? It could of course be anyone or anything. It could even be the FSM.
In all recent stuxnet-stories I've read on slashdot I've found a lot of comments (modded +5) beginning like this:
I don't know why everyone is so quick to assume it's {USA,Israel} behind this. It could be {Random country, the Yeti}...
Which is of course true. If you don't know who did it, you don't know who did it. BUT! That doesn't mean every possibility has the same probability.
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Great point. It reminds me of the O.J. trial where the prosecution DNA expert was explaining how the blood matched OJ's with a 1 in 6 million chance of being someone else (I'm fuzzy on the actual number - doesn't matter).
The defense lawyer asked the expert, "So did you test six million people to see if it matched all of them." The expert said something like, "No, we used a statistical procedure to determine the match, involving samples of 600 people's blood." (again I'm fuzzy on the actual #'s)
The defense
Yeah, I can write fiction too (Score:2)
I'm sure I could concoct any number of scenarios if I really wanted to. But Israel is far-and-away the obvious suspect--with the obvious motive, means, and opportunity. Of course, they could have been framed--but then so could have O.J. and pretty much every guy on death row. It all comes down to whether you want to accept the simplest and most obvious solution, or construct a big conspiracy theory because you're such an Israel fan that you just WILL NOT accept that they might have done something like this.
Could it be... (Score:2)
Regardless of who actually did the deed, chances are a lot of folks where involved by knowing what was happening and deciding not to say anything to the Iranians about it. Sometimes the most effective spying is when you known, but say nothing.
There are a lot of parties that stand to lose from a nuclear Iran.