Categories: Breaking NewsCyber warfareIntelligence

GCHQ helped US in developing Stuxnet, claims a documentary

A new documentary titled Zero Days revealed that the Stuxnet cyber weapon was just a small part of a much bigger Information Warfare operation (code named “NITRO ZEUS”) against the Iranian civilian infrastructure.

A new documentary titled Zero Days has revealed more disconcerting news on the Stuxnet worm, the first malware recognized by security industry as a cyber weapon. The documentary sheds light on the US war program that included the design of Stuxnet, it also reveals that hundreds of thousands of network implants and backdoors in Iran networks were managed by Western entities to penetrate Iranian infrastructure and destroy them.

Zero Days presented at the Berlin Film Festival confirms that Stuxnet was developed under the Information warfare operation called “Olympic Games,” which is part of a wider programme dubbed “Nitro Zeus” that involves hundreds of US cyber security experts. The US was not alone, the Israeli Government has a primary role in the Nitro Zeus program.

The documentary confirms that the nation-state hackers behind Stuxnet spent a significant effort in the attempting to covert their operation, they also designed the threat by restricting its operation only against Iranian machines.

One of the most intriguing novelties proposed in the documentary is the involvement of the GCHQ intelligence, the film sustains that the British intelligence provided information for the development of the four zero-day exploits specifically designed to hit the control systems at the Natanz facility.

The experts at the NSA have hardly worked to cover the tracks after the infection became public, but the author of the report confirmed the existence of a more aggressive version of Stuxnet developed by the Israeli force that went out of control infecting thousands of computers across more than 115 countries.

It is not clear is the GCHQ was informed about the Nitro Zeus program.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Stuxnet, Information Warfare)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.