It was a mole operated by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD that planted the infamous Stuxnet virus at an Iranian nuclear research site in 2007, sabotaging uranium enrichment centrifuges in what is widely regarded as the first ever use of cyber-weapons, Yahoo news reports today.
At the request of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad spy agency, the Dutch recruited the mole, an Iranian engineer, brought the virus program into Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility four intelligence sources familiar with the details tell the news site.
The report apparently provides the answer to one of the mysteries about the Stuxnet virus story — how the malicious program was introduced into Iranian control systems at Natanz that were not connected to the internet.
“The Dutch mole was the most important way of getting the virus into Natanz,” a source tells Yahoo.
The Stuxnet virus was uncovered in 2010 and was widely reported to have been developed together by US and Israeli intelligence. It penetrated Iran’s rogue nuclear program, taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges.
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From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
