The biggest--and most overlooked--event of the last year, bar none

Submittal:  The Stuxnet virus was the single-biggest event of the last year, barring anything even worse that wasn't actually released to the public's attention.


First, what Stuxnet is, from Wikipedia:  Stuxnet is a computer worm targeted at industrial equipment^[1] that was first discovered in July 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems,^[2] it is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems,^[3] and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.^[4][5] It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used to control and monitor industrial processes.^[6] Stuxnet includes the capability to reprogram the PLCs and hide its changes.^[7]


Next, then, on the ramifications of this new "computer worm":


Russian digital security company Kaspersky Labs released a statement that described Stuxnet as "a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race in the world."


Perhaps the ultimate tribute to it was by a computer security expert who called its advent—and the swath of destruction it cut through Iran's nuclear program—"an Oppenheimer moment" in the history of hacking. A moment in which malware viruses had made the leap from troublemaking but controllable depredations to potentially unstoppable, history-changing weapons, their capabilities miles ahead of their predecessors', the way the first nuclear weapon Oppenheimer built at Los Alamos left mere TNT in its wake and shadowed the world we live in with the threat of cataclysmic extinction.


Computer-security experts who have handled the most complex "malware" virus infections are agog.


More:


But an Oppenheimer moment means more than a quantum leap in the power and deceptiveness of the virus. It means dramatic geopolitical ramifications. If the original Oppenheimer moment may have guaranteed that WWII would end with the horrific Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, the Stuxnet Oppenheimer moment may have bequeathed us an unexpected last-minute reprieve from what seemed like a potential outbreak of nuclear warfare. Consider the fact that Stuxnet disabled Iran's key nuclear facilities (and infected an estimated 60,000 of its computers) just at the moment whenthe Israelis were giving out signals that they were prepared to use air strikes on Iranian facilities, using whatever weapons it took (and, of course, they have an undeclared nuclear arsenal), to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. Whatever you think of the Israeli position, there was little doubt they'd do it if there were no other options, and in doing so risk not only Iranian retaliation but nuclear retaliation from Iranian sympathizers in Pakistan's military, which all-too-loosely controls Pakistan's "Islamic bomb," the generic term for the 60 to 100 nuclear warheads the Pakistanis possess.


Finally, on what nearly happened last year, it is thought:


"The world was on the verge of a regional nuclear war with unknowable further consequences. 


Until Stuxnet did its work."  --Ron Rosenbaum, from his article "Stuxnet and the triumph of hacker culture", Slate Magazine


This last quote, above,  is, by itself, pretty remarkable, I think, for what it suggests we came perilously close to--I wonder how many other such events we've almost had--but what's also remarkable is the term "regional nuclear war".  Yeah, right.  As if.  There would--will?--be nothing "regional" about a nuclear war, anywhere in the world, but particularly if it begins in the Middle East, let there be no doubt.


Apparently the Middle East, at least, nearly literally blew up in nuclear war last year, folks.  


The good news is that nuclear war was averted.


The bad news is that now a "pandora's box" of computer virus "missiles" and all that entails are now released on the world.


Let's hope it's all in humankind's favor... forever and ever, amen.




Have a good weekend, y'all.


Try to think happy thoughts.


Link to original article:  http://www.slate.com/id/2281938/?from=rss
Link to definition of Stuxnet:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet