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Anonymous Says It Now Has Stuxnet

by Terrence O'Brien on February 15, 2011 at 07:30 AM

Anonymous Has Stuxnet News keeps coming out of the Anonymous attack on the security firm HBGary. Now, the hacktivist collective is claiming that it has access to Stuxnet, the powerful worm that is believed to have been developed by the U.S. and its allies to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. It's unclear if Anonymous plans to actually use Stuxnet, but a spokesperson from Symantec told the Guardian it would be very difficult for the group to make use of the worm. Security researchers have said that Anonymous does not have access to the crucial code that allowed Stuxnet to take out an Iranian nuclear plant. Additionally, part of what made Stuxnet so successful was how narrowly targeted it was. The creators clearly had a wealth of information about the target, and Stuxnet's power partially stemmed from the exhaustive amount of research that went into its development.

The version of Stuxnet obtained by Anonymous has been decompiled, meaning that the group does not have access to valuable contextual information that would have been included with the original source code. So, while the group does have access to what is, inarguably, one of the most sophisticated computer viruses ever built, their ability to understand it and utilize it is limited.

Tags: anonymous, anonymous+stuxnet, anonymousstuxnet, hbgary, HbgaryFederal, security, stuxnet, top

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