Warfare: CyberWar: 'Vanity Fair' mag runs piece on the Stuxnet Worm, and the change in worldwar

STUXNET WORM

A Declaration of Cyber-War

Last summer, the world’s top software-security experts were panicked by the discovery of a drone-like computer virus, radically different from and far more sophisticated than any they’d seen. The race was on to figure out its payload, its purpose, and who was behind it. As the world now knows, the Stuxnet worm appears to have attacked Iran’s nuclear program. And, as Michael Joseph Gross reports, while its source remains something of a mystery, Stuxnet is the new face of 21st-century warfare: invisible, anonymous, and devastating.

By Michael Joseph Gross•

Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson

April 2011

-- Vanity Fair (forthcoming April) article intro posted by Politicarp 

Iran: Mediation: A deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey fails, 'Big Powers' sanction Ayatollahland

Brazil brokers a swap deal between Iran and Turkey regarding enriched uranium (nuclear grade) for use in a key Turkish medical project, but meantime the slow grind of Big-Power diplomacy reaches agreement on draft resolution to be presented for a vote at the UN Security Council. Reuters via Yahoo! News offers this May18,2k10 dispatch, "Big powers agree on Iran sanctions draft":

The United States handed the U.N. Security Council a draft resolution on Tuesday that would expand U.N. sanctions against Iran by hitting its banking and other industries for refusing to halt nuclear enrichment.

The 10-page draft, agreed by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia after months of negotiations, also calls for international inspection of vessels suspected of carrying cargo related to Iran's nuclear or missile programs.

The Security Council draft restricts Iran's international expansion of banking for nuclear-war purposes, and it specifically names the Revolutionary Guard's activities, alerting the world to the latter's insidious if clandestine manoeverings.