Hot House Ball

This is a fascinating story about the U.S-Israeli collaboration to undermine the Iranian nuclear program through the Stuxnet computer worm - which, combined with the use of sanctions, has set it back farther than a military strike would have achieved.

Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program....

The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.

And then there's this:

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

But the most incredible part to me is not the worm itself - which is pretty remarkable - but the way the Israelis acquired spinning centrifuges just like those the Iranians had acquired from Pakistan, and mocked up the Iranian operation, and then tested the worm to ensure that it would work.

But here's the question. Do the Iranian's treat this as an attack, or as run-of-the-mill espionage? Is cyberwarfare now real, and what are the consequences?