So Anonymous hacked into that U.S. Security Firm HBGary, defaced their page and called out some CEO guy. Well apparently in their hackings they also stumbled across a fairly big part of the source code for the Stuxnet supervirus which took out Iran's nuclear reactors.

I guess this has some people worried that they could reverse engineer it somehow, but I don't see how they can with only part of the source code.

I googled it and don't understand it. Is the hacker threatening to release the virus?

Anonymous is a "collective" of people. Basically they cause problems online. An example is when they did large scale Denial of Service attacks against mastercard and paypal over the whole Wikileaks stuff.

Anyways, they obtained part of the Stuxnet code and are now distributing it around the net. The fear is that someone could reverse engineer the virus somehow since it's being widely released now.

this cant be good.

Just watch. They'll be outing other bad company practices soon enough. Current day revolutions won't be held in the streets. They'll be held digitally.

I'm glad they busted HBGary Federal. Just one of many companies, who utilize dirty measures to get what they want, and get away with it. I hope some charges end up getting filed against them. The public should be outraged.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/02/15/hbgary-execs-run-for-cover-as-hacking-scandal-escalates/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/the-ridiculous-plan-to-attack-wikileaks.ars/

Stuxnet was a very very specific virus. Just releasing it wouldn't do anything. Reverse engineering the code might make it easier to make a different PLC targetted virus, but the man hours involved in making it were so massive I can only imagine reverse engineering and rebuilding it would take at least as long. I think a bigger concern may be tracing it back to who exactly had their hands in it with enough proof to cause tension between countries. Not to mention the fact that it probably would be seen as a straight up act of war.

I'm pretty sure whoever released Stuxnet (US or Israel against Iran) is protected against Stuxnet.

this can only go one of two ways.....

a) they wanted stuxnet to get found by these folks. who knows why. who knows what lies in their shiney new pandora's box. i wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

b ) they did NOT want stuxnet to get found, and whoever lays their grubby paws on it can expect the cia, fbi, nsa, atf, irs, usps....you get the point.....to track them down like dogs. i wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

i just had a rather terrifying train of thought....

how do you quell a people's movement?

well, the first thing you do is cut off phones and internet.

how would the american government make that possible here?

well, we give the president the authority to shut it down in the event of a national security emergency.

psshhh....what sort of national emergency would require the int.....oh.

Don't worry. The virus would have to change completely to target the entire American or any countries infrastructure. Matter of fact it would have to change a lot just to target a different uranium enrichment plant.