Iran: U.S. attack plans a ‘joke’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Army responds to U.S. chief of staff MIke Mullen, who said his forces were assessing military options aginst Iran.

By DPA

An Iranian military commander said plans by the United States to attack Iran were a “joke,” the news network Press TV reported Monday.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN on Sunday that the US has been mulling military options against Iran, adding he would not believe “for a second” Tehran was using its nuclear plants for civilian purposes.

	Iranian soldiers simulate battle to mark the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war, September 26, 2010.
	Photo by: Reuters

“This is a joke,” General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander the Basij militia, told Press TV. “for 30 years the US has been dreaming (of an attack), hopefully they will wake up,” he said.

“They would not be able to move an inch as the Basij forces would surround them anywhere,” he added.

Although the US has pursued diplomatic negotiations and put international pressure on Iran in the dispute over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programmes, Washington not ruled out military options.

Tehran’s rulers regard US threats as psychological warfare to make them compromise in the nuclear dispute.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned repeatedly that in case of US aggression against Iran, it would “reply with no limit making the other side regret its actions.”

WikiLeaks fiasco doesn’t embarrass Israel one bit – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

There was no major discrepancy between messages delivered to Israeli press and those delivered to American diplomats.

By Aluf Benn

The “Israeli portion” of the U.S. government dispatches that were revealed yesterday by the WikiLeaks website revealed almost no new details regarding the exchange of messages between Jerusalem and Washington.

The secret documents sent by the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv show that the heads of the Israeli intelligence apparatus and the defense establishment refer to the same talking points when briefing American bureaucrats and congressional delegations as they do when speaking to journalists and Knesset members.

	From left, Gabi Ashkenazi, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak at a press conference this month.
	Photo by: Alon Ron

There is no significant discrepancy among the statements made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad director Meir Dagan and former Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin in speeches, before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in background talks with media commentators and the diplomatic conversations the held.

Thus Israel has no reason to be embarrassed by the leak, because there are no large gaps between what it said domestically and what it said for public consumption.

Dagan, Yadlin, and Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad are portrayed in the U.S. diplomatic cables as being at the vanguard of Israel’s public relations efforts, as trying to convince the Americans that Iran is dangerous and that it does not behoove Washington to supply weapons to Arab states.

U.S. officials are not convinced by these arguments, and as a result they repeat their oft-stated stance.

There are no revelations that proved embarrassing, such as American acquiescence to settlement expansion, which would be antithetical to Washington’s official position, or an Israeli statement of support for American dialogue with Hamas.

Kept out of inner chambers

WikiLeaks did not succeed in penetrating the most sensitive channels of U.S.-Israel relations.

Even after yesterday’s revelations, we still do not know what was really said in the meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, or between former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon during their talks with former U.S. President George W. Bush, or between Dagan and his counterparts at U.S. intelligence agencies.

Either all concerned read from their talking points during these meetings, or the U.S.-Israel relationship is really handled through avenues that have yet to be revealed.

The low level of classification and the lack of importance that is to be attached to these documents find expression in a conversation between Dagan and a White House aide, as cited in a cable dated July 26, 2007.

Seven weeks before the Israel Air Force reportedly destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor, the American guest broaches the subject of Damascus’ claims that Israel is on the verge of attacking Syria. Dagan lies to him.

“Despite the fact that Israel has no intention of attacking, said Dagan, the Syrians are likely to retaliate over even the smallest incident, which could lead to quick escalation,” the cable read.

Iran nuclear scientist ‘assassinated’ in Tehran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Assassins planted bombs on two victims’ cars, killing at least one, local press reports.

By News Agencies

Two Iranian university professors were killed on Monday in Tehran, Fars news agency reported.

An Iranian state TV’s website, only one of the victims, a nuclear scientist, was killed.

	The reactor building of the Bushehr nuclear power plant is seen, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran, on Aug. 21, 2010
	Photo by: AP

Fars said bombs were attached to both victims’ cars by assassins on motorcycles.

No further details were given on the identities of the victims or the attackers.

Fars accused of agents of the United States and Israel of being behind the killings.

WikiLeaks: Dagan wanted to topple Iranian regime – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Documents released after much hype say Mossad chief wanted to enlist Iranian opposition groups to revolt against government, while Arab leaders, including Mubarak, asked US to stop nuclear program with military strike

Ynet

The uncertainty is killing us.

US unlikely to take military action against Teheran until world’s intelligence agencies agree on the Iran’s point of no return.

Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for the US presidency in 2008, used to express his position on a nuclear Iran with a clear and decisive statement: “There is only one scenario worse than military action in Iran, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.”

The reality is obviously much more complex than that. For the past 10 years or so, thousands of intelligence experts, military commanders, experienced diplomats, nuclear scientists and world leaders have been trying to understand where the Iranian regime is headed. Despite this, there has still not been a decisive response to most of the questions that have been raised since 2002, when the Iranian opposition exposed secret nuclear sites that had been built under the noses of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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There is one question that is no longer being asked: Does Iran plan to develop nuclear arms, or can we trust its declarations that its nuclear program is civilian in nature? No one still believes that Iran would get itself entangled in diplomatic isolation, put itself at risk of preventative military attack and bring down upon itself harsh economic sanctions – all just to produce electricity. There is no economic justification for producing nuclear energy at a time when Iran has enormous sources of crude oil and natural gas.

The consistent Iranian rejection of compromise proposals, including the offer of civilian nuclear cooperation with Western countries, has strengthened the world’s recognition that Iran’s efforts are not aimed at attaining nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes. Even the periodic IAEA reports – which for a long time, during the tenure of the previous director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, demonstrably refrained from pointing an accusing finger at Iran – have become more focused and stringent, the more Iran refuses to answer the IAEA’s penetrating questions. After Yukiya Amano’s appointment as director-general, an IAEA report explicitly raised the suspicion that “Iran conducted or continues to conduct secret activities to produce enough material for a nuclear missile.”

Nowadays, it is not only Israel and the US that share the understanding that Iran is striving to develop an atomic weapon. Almost all world leaders do so, including leaders of Arab countries who lose sleep over the possibility of an extremist Iran equipped with nuclear arms.

AND YET, even though a universal consensus has been reached with regard to where Iran is headed, two essential questions remain.

1. Do the sanctions leveled against Iran have enough bite to bring its nuclear program to a halt?

2. Should sanctions fail, what is the final date beyond which it will no longer be possible to harm Iran’s nuclear program in a way that will cause it substantial setbacks?

The answers to these questions are heatedly disputed. With regard to the effectiveness of the sanctions, there are those who believe that the Iranian regime cannot allow for such a long-term economic assault, one that could eventually undermine its very survival. Others are convinced that for the sake of attaining the lofty goal of joining the prestigious nuclear-armed club, the ayatollahs’ regime will continue to demonstrate unwavering perseverance.

Concerning the exact status of the Iranian nuclear program, the number of answers is identical to the number of those answering. Indeed, this is not an easy matter to decipher. It’s not enough to calculate the amount of uranium that is enriched per centrifuge, per day. To realistically evaluate the strategic aims of Iran, you must provide solutions to a slew of dilemmas some of which, it is reasonable to assume, the Iranian leadership itself is still deliberating over.

For example, will Iran agree, under the pressure of sanctions, to a deal that it has rejected in the past, in which it will export a substantial amount of enriched uranium in return for the possible internationally recognized legitimacy of its nuclear program?

Another unknown: Will Iran refrain from totally breaking the rules, and not enrich uranium at a military level for the time being, but will attain the status of a “threshold state,” which has the ability to decide on any given date if it wishes to create an atomic bomb in a very short time?

And another mystery – is Iran running a secret nuclear facility, similar to the one recently discovered near Qom?

There are no clear-cut answers to any of these questions. For this reason, even the most respected intelligence agencies are having difficulty coming to an agreement over the “point of no return” of the Iranian nuclear program.

Over the past year, US President Obama has sharpened his remarks on the Iranian nuclear issue. His statements still have not come close to the forcefulness of McCain’s. Despite this, when the leader of the biggest superpower publicly declares that he is “determined to prevent a nuclear Iran,” one can assume that he is not making empty promises.

Yet the biggest problem of all still remains: As long as there is still uncertainty regarding both the effectiveness of the sanctions as an alternative to a military confrontation, and the date of the completion of the Iranian nuclear program, the US government will hesitate before translating harsh rhetoric into decisive military action.

The writer is a former Kadima MK.

Mossad chief in Wikileaks: US should change Iranian regime.

Diplomatic cables show Israeli focus on Iran since 2005, advocating regime change; officials try to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the ME.

The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Speigel published a number of documents from a planned Wikileaks release on Sunday evening, including many regarding Israel’s position Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

One document, dated June 2, 2009 and sent from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, details Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s visit with a two Congressional delegations. It quotes Barak as saying that “‘no option should be removed from the table’ when confronting Iran and North Korea.”

“Barak asked rhetorically how a lack of firm response to North Korea would be interpreted by Iran’s leadership, speculating the US government would be viewed as a ‘paper tiger’,” the diplomatic cable reads.

The embassy official also writes that “Barak said he was personally skeptical that engagement would lead to an acceptable resolution, and argued in favor of a paradigm shift to confront the triple threat posed by nuclear proliferation, Islamic extremist terrorism, and rogue/failing states.” Barak also encouraged a “strategic partnership with China, Russia, India, and the EU…in facing these threats.”

Barak said that the US and Israel “share the same intelligence” on Iran, but analyze the information differently. He said that the US views Iran as “innocent until proven guilty,” but that “the fate of the region and the world rests on our ability to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. As such, the standards for determining guilt should be lower as the costs are higher.”

Another document, released by The Guardian, shows American and Israeli officials, including Brig.-Gen. Pinchas Buchris and Defense Ministry Director-General Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, discussing how the US can deliver GBU-28 bunker busting bombs to Israel while avoiding “any allegations that the US government is helping Israel prepare for a strike against Iran.”

A number of documents, dating from as early as 2005, say that Iran will have nuclear weapons by 2010, and highlight the importance of taking this threat seriously.

“Israel is not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the US was on September 11, 2001,” Military Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin said to Congressmen in May, 2009.

Another document, from an August 2007 meeting with Mossad chief Meir Dagan, refers to “covert measures” to be used against Iran, but does not specify what they are. Dagan also “urged more attention on regime change” in Iran, “asserting that more could be done to develop the identities of ethnic minorities in Iran.”

Dagan said Israel and the US could “change the ruling regime in Iran, and its attitude towars backing terror regimes. We also could get them to delay their nuclear project. Iran could become a normal state.” He suggested exploiting Iran’s “weak spots” such as high unemployment and inflation rates, and Iranian citizens’ opposition to their government’s investments in Hamas.

In 2008, US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart A. Levey said US President Barack Obama is committed to putting financial pressure on Iran.

A number of other documents released reveal other Middle Eastern countries speaking out against Iran. A secret diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, discusses a meeting between Saudi King Abullah and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and US General David Patraeus in April 2008.

The cable quotes former Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir recalling, “the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. ‘He told you to cut off the head of the snake.'”

The document says that the Saudi foreign minister called for “severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending.” It added that, “the foreign minister also stated that the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out.”

Other issues discussed in the Wikileaks documents emerging from the Tel Aviv Embassy include the Goldstone Report, which “sets a bad precedent for countries trying to protect its citizens from terrorists,” and smuggling from Egypt into Israel, which Gilad said in a November 2009 meeting that “Egypt can do more” to prevent. Gilad also said that Israel suspects Egypt of preparing for a future conflict with Israel.

Israel also attempted to block the US from selling F15 planes to Saudi Arabia. US and Israeli officials repeatedly discussed the importance of maintaining Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the Middle East.

WikiLeaks exposé: Barak warned strike on Iran was viable until end of 2010 – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

A 2009 American government cable released Sunday by the WikiLeaks website quotes Defense Minister Ehud Barak as telling visiting American officials that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was viable until the end of 2010, but after that “any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage.”

	Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on September 1, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

The whistle-blowing website obtained some 250,000 diplomatic cables between the U.S. and its allies, which Washington had urged the site not to publish.But by Sunday evening Israel time, major news organizations around the world had released a significant amount of documents touching on subjects ranging from Iran’s nuclear aspirations, to espionage at the United Nations and even the behavior of the British monarchy.

The June 2009 cable also quotes Barak as describing the Iranian leadership as “chess, not backgammon players,” with a U.S. diplomat quoting the defense minister as saying Tehran would “attempt to avoid any hook to hang accusations on, and look to Pakistan and North Korea as models to emulate in terms of acquiring nuclear weapons while defying the international community.”

Meanwhile, another cable shows that a 2009 claim by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran was months away from achieving military nuclear capability was dismissed by the Americans as a ploy.

According to German weekly Der Spiegel, which also received advance information from WIkiLeaks, a State Department official says in a classified cable that Netanyahu informed the United States of Iran’s nuclear advancement in November 2009, but that the prime minister’s estimate was likely unfounded and intended to pressure Washington into action against the Islamic Republic.

Many of the classified communiques seem to reveal the inner workings of American and international diplomacy, and are likely to cause major embarrassment to the United States. American embassies in more than a dozen nations have informed their host countries that secret cables relating to them could be among those exposed.

The Guardian also quotes documents that show officials in Jordan and Bahrain “openly calling for Iran’s nuclear program to be stopped by any means, including military.” The British daily also says leaders in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt called Iran “evil,” and an “existential threat” which “is going to take us to war.”

Another cable published by The Guardian, from later in 2009, cites a meeting of the U.S.-Israel Joint Political Military Group, in which members of Israel’s Mossad spy agency said Iran was using repeated attempts to resolve the nuclear issue through diplomacy to “play for time” and evade sanctions, “while pursuing its strategic objective to obtain a military nuclear capability.”

The cable also quotes Mossad representatives as believing that Iran wanted “to become a regional hegemon, and is dictating its agenda by using Hamas and Hezbollah as force multipliers.”

Regarding what he considered Iran’s true nuclear capabilities, a 2007 cable quoted outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan as stating that Tehran was attempting to convey a “false presentation that they have mastered the uranium enrichment process.”

“The reality is,” Dagan said, “that they are not there yet, and they are paying a heavy political price [sanctions] for something they have yet to achieve.”

In Dagan’s view, the 2007 cable stated, there wasn’t an “ideological conflict within the Iranian leadership (all wish to see the destruction of Israel), but there is a growing divide on tactics with some supporting a retaliatory position against the West and others favoring new policies of moderation.”

Netanyahu had earlier Sunday downplayed any possible damage the documents could have on Israel’s security, saying he did not feel Israel would be the focal point of the leaked cables.

“Israel is not the center of international attention,” Netanyahu said, adding that Jerusalem had not “been updated by the Americans about specific sensitive materials to be disclosed regarding Israel.

Leaked document: Barak encourages attack on Iran, N. Korea.

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Photo by: Associated Press

By JPOST.COM STAFF HERB KEINON AND AP
11/28/2010 20:47

Wikileaks documents show Defense Minister skeptical

Barak asked rhetorically how a lack of firm response to North Korea would be interpreted by Iran’s leadership, speculating the US government would be viewed as a ‘paper tiger’,” the diplomatic cable reads.

The embassy official also writes that “Barak said he was personally skeptical that engagement would lead to an acceptable resolution, and argued in favor of a paradigm shift to confront the triple threat posed by nuclear proliferation, Islamic extremist terrorism, and rogue/failing states.” Barak also encouraged a “strategic partnership with China, Russia, India, and the EU…in facing these threats.”

Also on Sunday, pages from German newspaper Der Spiegel were leaked, revealing some of the contents of the Wikileaks documents to be released later in the day.

The documents quoted in the leaked article include nicknames for a number of world leaders. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is referred to as “Hitler,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a “naked emperor,” the German Chancellor is called Angela “Teflon” Merkel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is “driven by paranoia.” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is an “Alpha Male,” while President Dmitry Medvedev is “afraid, hesitant.”

The documents also say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il suffers from epilepsy, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi’s full-time nurse is a “hot blond,” and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi loves “wild parties.”

The article also quotes the State Department as saying that US President Barack Obama “prefers to look East rather than West,” and “has no feelings for Europe.”

“The US sees the world as a conflict between two superpowers,” the diplomatic cables say. “The European Union plays a secondary role.”

On Sunday evening, the Wikileaks site was made unavailable to users. The whistle-blower site experienced a “distributed denial of service attack,” according to the its Twitter account.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday during a tour of work being done on a new fence on the Egypt-Israel border that Israel has received no new “specific” warnings regarding what is in the WikiLeaks documents scheduled to be released later in the evening.

Netanyahu said that he does not even think the Americans know exactly what is in the document. He said there is often a gap between what is said in private and what is said publicly.

“There are three million documents, so I don’t know if the Americans were able to clarify” their contents, Netanyahu said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Sunday that the documents released by Wikileaks will not harm the relations between Israel and the US.

“There’s nothing to get excited about,” Ayalon said. “We have to be patient. As someone who knows Israel-US relations from up close, I can say that our joint interests are the basis of the relationship, and not small issues hear and there.”

“No document can damage our friendship with the US,” Ayalon added.

Israel, along with various US allies around the world, was on high alert Sunday morning, after being briefed by American diplomats about the expected release of classified files.

An Israeli government source said that already last Wednesday the US had informed Israel that it could be mentioned in the anticipated WikiLeaks release of the classified US cables and documents.

“They did not want us to hear about it from the media. We appreciated the phone call and we thanked them for giving us the heads up,” the official said.

Another Israeli official added that the American Embassy in Tel Aviv had been calling Israelis named in the documents in order to warn them in advance. The list includes officials in the Foreign Ministry, as well as aides to prime ministers, this official said.

Obama: Leaked documents will endanger “countless” lives

The Obama administration on Sunday told whistle-blower WikiLeaks that its expected imminent release of classified State Department cables will put “countless” lives at risk, threaten global counter-terrorism operations and jeopardize US relations with its allies.

In a highly unusual step reflecting the administration’s grave concerns about the ramifications of the move, the State Department released a letter from its top lawyer to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his attorney telling them that publication of the documents would be illegal and demanding that they stop it.

It also said the US government would not cooperate with WikiLeaks in trying to scrub the cables of information that might put sources and methods of intelligence gathering and diplomatic reporting at risk.

The letter from State Department legal adviser Harold Koh was released as US diplomats around the world are scrambling to warn foreign governments about what might be in the secret documents that are believed to contain highly sensitive assessments about world leaders, their policies and America’s attempts to lobby them.

In the letter, Koh said the publication of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, which is expected on Sunday, will “place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals,” ”place at risk on-going military operations,” and “place at risk on-going cooperation between countries.”

“They were provided in violation of US law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action,” he said. Koh said WikiLeaks should not publish the documents, return them to the US government and destroy any copies it may have in its possession or in computer databases.

Gil Hoffman and Tovh Lazaroff contributed to this report.

Iran’s nuclear programme: what Stuxnet did, and what it can’t do – Telegraph Blogs.

An H-bomb is fired on Elugelab Island, November 1st, 1952 (Photo: EPA)

In 1940, Britain’s secret services launched a series of audacious operations targeting a heavy water plant at Vemork, in Norway, directed at ending Nazi Germany’s nuclear programme. It worked – but at a great cost, in terms of human life.

Earlier this year, someone tried destroying Iran’s nuclear programme using nothing more than a few lines of code typed out on a personal computer. It worked, too – but not well enough to end Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear scientists are smart: despite harsh international sanctions, set up to deny them access to key technologies, they’ve succeeded in enriching uranium to weapons grade.

But it turns out they are also capable of great stupidity. Few institutions with security concerns will allow anyone carry a portable disk drive into their premises. Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr did that – and a computer worm planted on the drive led hundreds of high-speed centrifuges to spin out of control.

Mahmoud Liayi, the head of Iran’s information technology council, described the attack as “an electronic war.” He’s right. The Stuxnet worm modifies the code which runs programmable logic controllers, or PLCs – microprocessors which are used to control the operations of certain kinds of industrial machines.  The worm both steals design projects and uploads its own upload its own code to the PLC.  Stuxnet hides its handiwork, so operators have no way of knowing that PLCs have been tampered with.

Infected machines, a useful video from the computer security firm Symantec shows, spin out of control.

Erich Chien, among the experts who first worked out how Stuxnet worked, wrote last week that it targeted frequency converters made by just two companies, one head-quartered in Finland and the other in Tehran.

Frequency converter drives are a power supply unit which control the speed of motors – the higher the frequency, the faster the motor runs. Mr Chien didn’t speculate on what Stuxnet’s authors hoped to achieve , but noted that “a conveyor belt in a retail packaging facility is unlikely to [have been] the target.”

Experts say this kind of operation isn’t as complicated as it sounds.  Rahul Mishra, a programmer, said that creating worms like Stuxnet wasn’t “outside the capabilities of most competent hackers.”  Adam Meyers, a computer security expert, also noted that Stuxnet “was not a lot different from other malware.”

So, is a bit of software all it will take to stop rogue nuclear programmes?  Probably not. Wired magazine has pointed out that a similar worm could hurt North Korea’s nuclear programme, but only if someone could infiltrate its heavily-defended facilities in the first place. More important, the Stuxnet attack just slowed down the Bushehr plant for a couple of months: Iran has successfully added large amounts of enriched uranium to its stockpile since.

That’s a pity, because international sanctions haven’t done a lot to slow down Iran’s nuclear programme either – and experts don’t think they’re likely to do so in the future.

Somewhere in the world – and there are no prizes for guessing where – a secret service is considering what it needs to do next.

Experts slam Stuxnet black market hype – V3.co.uk – formerly vnunet.com.

Experts slam Stuxnet black market hype

A ‘sorry dishrag of a story’, say security experts

Phil Muncaster

V3.co.uk, 26 Nov 2010

Security experts have reacted angrily to a report on Sky News this week alleging that the Stuxnet worm is now being traded on the black market and could be used by terrorists to launch attacks on the UK’s critical infrastructure.

The report quotes a “senior IT security source” as saying that there is “hard evidence that the virus is in the hands of the bad guys”.

Sky News also quotes UK government IT security consultant Will Gilpin as saying that the worm could shut down the emergency 999 service, along with hospital systems, power stations and “the transport network across the UK” .

However, David Harley, a senior research fellow at anti-virus firm Eset, branded the report “a sorry dishrag of a story”, and said that many supposed outcomes of the worm being sold on the black market are greatly exaggerated.

Harley explained in a blog post that it might be possible to shut down some hospital systems “at a (biiiiiiiig) stretch”, in the “unlikely event that they use equipment supplied from Tehran or Finland in certain therapeutic contexts”.

The researcher suggested that the Sky News report had been based on a “garbled, super-hyped interpretation” of a story emerging earlier this week that the source code for the yet-unpatched Windows Task Scheduler, which is just one of the four vulnerabilities used in the Stuxnet attacks, can now be bought online.

Paul Ducklin, head of technology for Asia Pacific at Sophos, also picked holes in the sources used by Sky News, claiming that they were “hiding behind the ‘if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you’ cop out”.

“We don’t need yet more speculation about Stuxnet when we already face a determined and extensive enemy in the form of cyber criminals,” he said in a blog post.

“They are routinely stealing our credentials, plundering our bank accounts, raiding our retirement funds, subverting our payment systems and even selling our houses from under our feet.”

Ducklin added that inflammatory stories such as this make cyber crime sound like a second-rate problem.

“Yet it is the sort of rampant and general cyber criminality I mention above which is, in my opinion, significantly more likely to undermine the economic stability of, and thus the quality of life in, many developed countries,” he said.