Can computer hackers get inside your mind?
6/17/202630 min
The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war.
The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program. Some of that conflict has been out in the open, with bombs and blockades, but some of it has been invisible.
Recently some security researchers discovered a cyberweapon likely tied to that invisible conflict. It looks like it was designed to hide on nuclear scientists computers, then throw off their calculations--just as they got close to achieving their goals.
Sounds like something out of science fiction. But it was created 20 years ago.
On today’s show: a whodunit about hackers, ‘Cyber Paleontologists’, spy-vs-spy protocols, cryptic intelligence leaks, nuclear physics, high-precision math, and epistemological warfare.
Pictured: Juan Andres Guerrero Saade (JAGS) and his ‘Fast16 - NOTHING TO SEE HERE, CARRY ON’ tattoo.
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This episode was hosted by Nick Fountain and Erika Beras. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore and engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
Music: NPR Source Audio - “High Tech Expert,” “Digital Wave,” and “Hyper Pop.”
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Erica Beras· Host0:21
[mellow music] This is Planet Money from NPR. On Friday, if all goes according to plan, representatives from the U.S. and Iran will meet in Geneva to sign another 60-day ceasefire agreement. But the two sides still have not come to an agreement on what's been at the heart of this war and decades of conflict, Iran's development of nuclear weapons.
Nick Fountain· Host0:51
Right. This conflict has been on again, off again for years. And while the most recent iteration has been very violent with bombs and blockades, there is a whole other almost entirely invisible war that the U.S. and allies have been waging with Iran using cyber espionage, or more accurately, cyber sabotage. You know, computer viruses, malware. Recently, we heard a story about a piece of malware that might have been used in this invisible war that was diabolically cunning because it exploited weaknesses in computers, yes, but also maybe