Here's an interesting news story called "The Internet in pieces" by Misha Glenny writing for the Guardian. The story tells how Iran has decided to block all access to the global Internet from within Iran and create a giant Iranian intranet. Ostensibly the reason is to protect Iran from cyber attacks like the recent Stuxnet worm. Of course a side effect will be to deny Iranian counter-revolutionaries access to Twitter, Facebook and all forms of external information. Whilst I can't see this being anything other than harmful to Iranians in the short term the potential for much larger countries, like China, to create their own web that has all the content and services that the vast majority of their population needs is clearly a possibility.
Chapter 12, Digital Underworld of The Universal Machine has more about Stuxnet and cyberwar.
Kaspersky Lab's has reported a new virus they've called Gauss, that can spy on bank transactions and gather account names, passwords and other information. Worringly this virus seems to have been made by the same people who created the Stuxnet worm that infected Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Gauss has infected more than 2,500 personal computers, mostly in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Targets included Lebanon's BlomBank, ByblosBank and Credit Libanais, as well as Citibank and eBay's PayPal online payment system. It's possible that Gauss is being used by Israeli or US agencies to spy on Lebanese banks to ascertain if they are involved in money laundering for Hezbollah. If true this is a worrying escalation in state sponsored cyberwar.
