Pierluigi Paganini
December 02, 2013
The Fars agency reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia have started a joint collaboration for the development of a new cyber weapon with the intent to spy on and destroy the Iranian nuclear program.
The Iranian agency explicitly referentied “an informed source” close to the Saudi secret service, the informant cited a meeting happened in Vienna on November 24th between that Saudi spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the Mossad head Tamir Pardo. The meeting was arranged to discuss about the “‘two sides’ cooperation in intelligence and sabotage operations against Iran’s nuclear program.”
“One of the proposals raised in the meeting was the production of a malware worse than the Stuxnet to spy on and destroy the software structure of Iran’s nuclear program,” revealed the source to the Fars agency.
Just a week ago Arab media reported that Prince Bandar met in Tel Aviv the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Francois Hollande to discuss on diplomatic relations between US and Iran.
Netanyahu appealed to American and French governments to oppose the proposed agreement with Iran, he considers Iran’s nuclear program a direct threat to Israel’s state.
A new cyber weapon similar to Stuxnet is the goal of the partnership, the popular malware was designed according various sources by Israeli in a joint collaboration with US to hit Iran’s uranium enrichment program and in particular it was used to infect SCADA within the nuclear facility at Natanz. Also Edward Snowden confirmed to Der Spiegel that the U.S. cooperated with Israel to design and deploy produce the Stuxnet virus.
Recently the Sunday Times reported of other secret dialogues between Israel and Saudi Arabia to arrange a possible attack against Iran in case of failure for the Geneva talks on Iranian nuclear program, the Saudis would allow Israel use of air space and provide drones, rescue helicopters and tanker planes to the allies to support the operations.
“Once the Geneva agreement is signed, the military option will be back on the table. The Saudis are furious and are willing to give Israel all the help it needs,” the Times quoted the source as saying.
Israel and Saudi Arabi consider Iran an enemy to destroy, the progress of Iranian nuclear program are not acceptable and represent for both governments a dangerous threat.
The creation of cyber weapons is no less dangerous of the Iranian nuclear program, the diffusion of such malware could cause serious damage to a critical infrastructure with unpredictable results, nor to exclude the possibility to directly hit innocent population.
Exactly as for nuclear program it is absolutely necessary the definition of a shared law framework that establish how to use a cyber weapon and which are the rules of engage, a cyber weapon could have effects similar to a nuclear bomb.
(Security Affairs – Israel, cyber weapon)
