ANONYMOUS: For Natanz, it was a CIA-led operation, so we had to have agency sign-off. Someone from the agency stood behind the operator and the analyst and gave the order to launch every attack.
CHIEN: Before they could have even started this attack, they put inside the code the kill date, a date at which it would stop opperating.
O'MURCHU: Cut-off dates. We don't normally see that. And you have to think, well, 'Why is that cut-off date in there?' When you realize, well, this section was probably written by government and that there are laws regarding how you can use this sort of software, there may have been a legal team who said, 'No. You need to have a cutt-off date in there, and you can only do this and you can only go this far. We nee to check if this is legal or not. That date is a few days before Obama's inauguration [JANUARY 20,2009]. So the theory was that this was an operation that needed to stopped at a certain time, because there was going to be a hand-over and more approval was needed.
—Zero Days