Sweet Fancy Moses: The Electronic Tomahawk Known as Stuxnet May Have Taken Out Thousands of Iranian Centrifuges!

The Associated Press has an exclusive report, relayed through diplomatic channels, that thousands of Iranian centrifuges have been shut down. The centrifuges are used to enrich uranium and could easily be employed to build nuclear weapons.

The diplomats told The Associated Press on Monday they had no specifics of the problem that led Iran in recent months to briefly power down the machines... But suspicions focused on the Stuxnet worm, the computer virus thought to be aimed at Iran's nuclear program. Experts last week identified the worm as calibrated to destroy centrifuges by sending them spinning out of control.


Iran is under U.N. sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment, which it says it needs to make reactor fuel. The process can be used to produce the fissile core of nuclar warheads.

If this report is accurate -- and the attack can truly be attributed to Stuxnet -- it probably represents the most insanely sophisticated use of information warfare in history. That we know of.


Related: The 5 Most Amazing Details of the Stuxnet Cyberbomb