Personal Computers Of Iranian Nuclear Plant Employees Infected By Stuxnet Worm

"An electronic war has been launched against Iran", Mahmoud Liayi, head of the information technology council at the ministry of industries, told the state-run Iran Daily newspaper. This, in response to reports that a sophisticated computer worm had infected the personal computers of staff at the country's first nuclear power station, the Bushehr plant, due to come on line in the coming weeks. Officials claim that the operating system at the plant has been unaffected by the Stuxnet worm, so sophisticated that it is believed to be the work of "a nation state".

Stuxnet targets systems made by the German company Siemens, these systems are typically used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other utilities. The Iranians claim that computers operating on some 30,000 IP addresses within the country have been infected.

Western nations fears Iran's goal is to build nuclear weapons while Iranian officials says its programme is aimed solely at peaceful energy use.

Source: BBC

CIA and Vatican amoungst Wikipedia editors

In my post yesterday, "WikiScanner keeping things real" I pointed to a story about a new website that allows you to see who is editing what on Wikipedia. In this story from Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, CIA and Vatican IP addresses are cited as the sources of edits to pages with obvious self serving intents. The CIA computers are linked to "nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran's president, the Argentine navy, and China's nuclear arsenal." while an IP address belonging to the Vatican is said to have been used "to remove references to evidence linking Ireland's Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to a decades-old double murder." In a perfect world such measures would not be required to make Wikipedia an open and reliable tool. If nothing else perhaps those with intent to mislead will be a little more careful of where they are making their edits from.