Security News > 2021 > June > When security gets physical: Mossad boss hints at less-than-subtle Stuxnet followup

The outgoing head of Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad has suggested that Stuxnet wasn't the only spanner in the works his agency put into Iran's nuclear programme.

In an interview last week, Yossi Cohen intimated that Iran's uranium-enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz facility had been physically destroyed in the past year, requiring a rebuild.

This kinetic approach is a far cry from a decade or more ago, when a combined US and Israeli operation covertly installed the Stuxnet malware on the air-gapped computer systems used to control some of Iran's centrifuges.

The sophisticated malware surreptitiously interfered with the centrifuge speed to derail Iran's uranium fuel enrichment process.

Ransomware scumbags have made bank when companies, or their insurers, decide it's cheaper to pay up rather than sort out the issue, but once you've had malware on a system chances are there are other software nasties in there and you'll have to reformat anyway - if you follow best practices.

She's accused of developing code for the Trickbot malware botnet and building ransomware to send to infected PCs. "The defendant is accused of working with others in the transnational criminal organization to develop and deploy a digital suite of malware tools used to target businesses and individuals all over the world for theft and ransom," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco earlier this month.

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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/06/15/in_brief_security/