I have been fascinated by the concept of the Stuxnet attacks
... "the malware programs thought to have been jointly developed by the U.S. and Israel
that targeted the Iranian nuclear program, but quickly made its way into the digital wild".
I've often thought this could become a great movie genre,
but so far there has not been a lot of public information.
That is changing.
This article in the Washington Post has links to all sorts of information,
starting at the U.S. group called "Technical Access Operations"
Washington Post
Andrea Peterson
8/29/13
The NSA has its own team of elite hackers
Quote:
Our Post colleagues have had a busy day.
First, they released documents revealing the U.S. intelligence budget
from National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden.
Then they recounted exactly how the hunt for Osama bin Laden went down.
In that second report, Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman shared a few tidbits
about the role of the government’s hacking unit, Tailored Access Operations (TAO) in the hunt,
writing that TAO “enabled the NSA to collect intelligence from mobile phones
that were used by al-Qaeda operatives and other ‘persons of interest’ in the bin Laden hunt.”
So just what is Tailored Access Operations?
According to a profile by Matthew M. Aid for Foreign Policy, it’s a highly secret
but incredibly important NSA program that collects intelligence about foreign targets
by hacking into their computers, stealing data, and monitoring communications.
Aid claims TAO is also responsible for developing programs that could destroy
or damage foreign computers and networks via cyberattacks if commanded to do so by the president.
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