News you may have missed #428 (history edition)
September 9, 2010 Leave a comment
- US government study of Soviet-era spy services released. A historiographic blog has released a study by the US Federal Office of Criminal Investigations on Practices and Methods of East-Bloc Intelligence Services, which examines the spy craft and operations of Soviet-aligned secret services active in Germany.
- Simon Wiesenthal worked for Mossad, claims book. A new book claims that famous Israeli Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal worked as an informant for Israel’s Mossad spy agency. Written by Tom Segev, the book, entitled Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, claims that Wiesenthal gave the Mossad valuable information during Operation DAMOCLES.
- UK spies did ‘very bad things’ in Cold War, says Le Carre. But even though they assassinated individuals and engaged in “a lot of direct action”, “decent humanitarian instincts came into play” in Western intelligence agencies’ operations, claims the former MI5 and MI6 spy and novelist. Raw Story‘s Daniel Tencer offers an interesting response.
intelNews.org 
Experts see nation-state behind sophisticated computer virus attack
September 29, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments
Ahmadinejad
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Computer forensics specialists are split as to the purpose and initial target of a sophisticated computer virus that infected computers used in the Iranian government’s nuclear energy program. The virus, named Stuxnet, was discovered in Iran in June by a Belarusian computer security firm doing business in the Islamic Republic. It has since infected at least 100,000 computer systems in countries such as Brazil, India, Russia and the United States. But the primary target of the virus appears to have been the Iranian nuclear energy program, specifically computers located at the Islamic Republic’s nuclear reactor facility in Bushehr and the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Several commentators, including Wired magazine, dispute the existence of any evidence pointing to a clear target inside Iran. But Israeli media maintain that computers at Natanz were the primary target of Stuxnet, and that subsequent infections at computer labs at Bushehr were in fact an unintended side effect. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Belarus, Bushehr nuclear power plant, cybersecurity, cyberwar, Iran, Israel, Israeli military, Middle East, Mossad, Natanz Enrichment Facility, News, nuclear proliferation, sabotage, Stuxnet, Unit 8200