14 DAY TRIAL // After Symantec did a little reverse engineering on the now infamous Stuxnet worm, many started pointing the finger at the US and Israel, especially since it was concluded that the piece of malware was designed to target a specific version of the Siemens SCADA programmable logic controls (PLC) operating in certain nuclear facilities from Iran.
Dr. Panayotis A. Yannakogeorgos, a cyber-defense analyst with the US Air Force Research Institute, believes that Stuxnet might be created by Russia, but cleverly conceived to make it look like it comes from the US.
“The Russians don’t support an Iranian indigenous nuclear capability. Their calculus is that their companies’ profit margins will benefit as long as the Iranians keep Russian scientists and engineers in country, who can oversee Iranian nuclear progress,” Yannakogeorgos wrote in The Diplomat.
“Using its unique insights, Russia then plays a Byzantine game of delay and diplomacy. Delaying a program on technical grounds can’t go on indefinitely. At the same time, their involvement in the nuclear program is leverage in Russo-American negotiations.”
He believes that the Russians could have easily planted some digital fingerprints to make sure that whoever analyzed the piece of malware would come to the conclusion that the US and Israel are behind it.
Also, it’s in their best interest to make sure that the worm cannot be traced back to Kremlin during a detailed analysis.
Since no one is officially accusing them, Russia can wait silently, but at the same time, they would know exactly what goes on with the Iranian nuclear program.
Finally, Yannakogeorgos states that it doesn’t really matter who’s pulling the strings when it comes to Stuxnet.
The fact that it exists is enough for those who work on the nuclear programs to constantly second guess their work, making progress in the domain almost impossible.