Stuxnet... the origin... and implications...

Wow! I was reading Jeffrey Carr's post in which he admits being wrong about Stuxnet origin, and he references this article that made him change is minde. It is definitely a fascinating read about Stuxnet, how it was conceived, developed and used. I recommend that you take a time and read it! Namely, for several years now you'll find all over the Internet accusations that Chinese government is attacking western companies and governments. But this shows that other governments aren't sitting and doing nothing. Moreover, this article shows that malware has been brought to a new level of use in which it is used as attack weapon, to cite the article: Somebody crossed the Rubicon.

I suppose this will have a huge impact and lot of implications:

1. Russia is pushing towards some kind of international treaty that would regulate use of cyberweapons. One of the advocates of this is Kaspersky, but there are also critiques. Anyway, this article gives a push to Russian government intentions.
2. What impact will this have to closed source software? Because, no one can never be sure what's in there, especially if the company producing this software is under control of foreign country. Now, Microsoft already gave access to source code of, I think India among others, but this also means that Indian secret services can find bugs and use it against other countries? Sounds like Games without frontiers...
3. Antivirus software, NIDS, HIDS and usual protection doesn't help here! They relay on a mass, i.e. someone gets infected but this allows anti virus companies to analyze threat, to create signatures and to update anti virues software so that huge majority is protected. These are, in a way, custom made attack programs.
4. With a backup of government agencies, these attacks can be very sophisticated. But note that anyone with enough resources (i.e. reach enough) can do the same.

All in all, very interesting and far reaching developments...