Facing mounting concern about Iran's nuclear program, a top US and Israeli technical team has developed an improved computer "malworm" designed to take down all of Iran's computer software.
According to former and serving US intelligence officials, leaders of the three major software companies, Sergey Brin at Google, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft and Larry Ellison at Oracle have been working with Israel's top cyber warriors and have now come up with a new version of a Stuxnet-like worm that can bring down Iran's entire software networks if the Iranian regime gets too close to breakout, according to US intelligence sources.
The three companies had no comment on this story.
"Cyber warfare is a lot like biological warfare. It's hard to stop. It's uncontrollable. It can bite you in the ass," said one US official.
In spite of US intelligence operations to hamper or thwart any progress on Iran's nuclear program, Israel continues to claim in recent months that Iran has taken advantage of the West's fixation with the Arab Spring to forge ahead unnoticed with its weapons program.
US officials dismissed this claim by the Israelis, pointing out that it was hard to argue on one hand that a "malworm" had severely damaged Iran's system to the point where it has had to replace its machines, and then on the other hand boast of Iran's ongoing secret progress. "That nonsense is for Israeli hawks like (Israel's Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu," one source said.
