Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

by Kim Zetter

The CIA would let the Soviets continue to obtain the technology they wanted—but with the spy agency slipping modified designs and blueprints into the mix to misdirect their scientific efforts toward money-wasting ventures. He also proposed modifying products and components before they reached the Iron Curtain so that they would pass any quality-assurance tests the Soviets might subject them to, then fail at a later date. The plan was a veritable win-win because even if the Soviets discovered the counterintelligence operation, they would forever be suspicious of any information or technology later acquired from the West, never certain how or if it had been altered or when it might malfunction. It would be a “rarity in the world of espionage,” Weiss later wrote in an internal CIA newsletter describing the scheme: “an operation that would succeed even if compromised.”17 Under the scheme, “contrived computer chips found their way into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted the output of chemical plants and a tractor factory,” Weiss wrote. Additionally, the Soviets were fed misleading information about stealth and tactical aircraft as well as Western space defense programs. The Soviet Space Shuttle was also built on “a rejected NASA design” that had been slipped to the Soviets, Weiss revealed.18 The Farewell operation was never discovered, according to Weiss, but Vetrov was not so lucky. He was imprisoned in 19...