Running Out of Time on Iran, and All Out of Options

Interview with Richard Clarke

Richard Clarke spoke about cyber warfare at Tel Aviv University's Third Annual International Cyber Security Conference. During the conference, Clarke, 62, sat down with The Times of Israel for an interview on Iran's nuclear program, the Syrian civil war, ongoing terror threats to the United States, the reasons behind the continued incarceration of spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard, and more.

The Times of Israel: It seems to be the new common wisdom at this conference that the Stuxnet computer virus was a failure — that it barely set back the Iranian nuclear program and that it detrimentally legitimized that kind of warfare.

Richard Clarke: Well, it did. I think it's hard for the United States now, if someone else were to do something like that, it's hard for the United States to criticize it because people will say, "well, you did it." So, yes, I think Stuxnet had a few down sides. One of those down sides was that the actual attack code became publicly available. As far as I can tell the attack code was supposed to die and not get out onto the Internet, but apparently the same way it got into Natanz [Iranian nuclear enrichment facility], it got out, and ran around the world trying to attack things. But of course it couldn’t, because it was programmed only to attack in a rather specific set of circumstances. Nonetheless it tried to attack things and people therefore grabbed it and decompiled it, so it's taught a lot of people how to attack....

Read the entire interview:http://www.timesofisrael.com/running-out-of-time-on-iran-and-all-out-of-options/