Hack Blogspot

Image by New Media Days via Flickr For Julian Assange , the WikiLeaks founder and guiding spirit, it must have been sweet. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to smooth over the embarrassment, while the White House huffed that a criminal investigation was underway. The French government was decrying "the height of irresponsibility," and Pakistan was reckoning with a rebuke from its traditional patron, Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the pasty-faced Assange, a self-appointed knight-errant who has been doing battle with official secrecy since 2006, was in the shadows somewhere - few knew where - undoubtedly savoring the ruckus caused by WikiLeaks' exposure of confidential State Department cables. In an uncomfortable irony, however, he had to do the savoring in a secret location, because Interpol, the international anti-crime organization, has issued a high-priority "red notice" asking member countries to arrest him. President Obama's spok...

Image via Wikipedia By now, you've probably heard of Stuxnet, the mysterious computer worm that infects Windows computers running software designed by Siemens, the German industrial giant. The software, Simatic WinCC, is what's known as a SCADA system -- "supervisory control and data acquisition" -- and it's used to help run everything from traffic systems and pipelines to nuclear plants. Siemens has known about Stuxnet for some time, and has been tracing the worm's spread on its website. In July 2010, the company knew of only one industrial facility affected. By September 7, it was reporting that 15 systems had been hit worldwide. (The worm was first discovered in June by VirusBlokAda, a little-known Belarussian security firm.) For months, the discussion about the virus stayed within the cybersecurity community, but once speculation began to mount that it was aimed at Iran's nuclear facilities, the news went, er, viral. Amid the uproar last week, Ira...