Stuxnet: Computer Worm Targets Iran Nuke Plant?

YankeeFan · Sep 27, 2010

Not an expert on the subject by any means, but if we (or the Israelis or the Brits) were able to target Iran's nuclear plant, it seems like a stroke of genius to me.

A complex computer worm capable of seizing control of industrial plants has affected the personal computers of staff working at Iran's first nuclear power station weeks before the facility is to go online, the official news agency reported Sunday.

The project manager at the Bushehr nuclear plant, Mahmoud Jafari, said a team is trying to remove the malware from several affected computers, though it "has not caused any damage to major systems of the plant," the IRNA news agency reported.

It was the first sign that the malicious computer code, dubbed Stuxnet, which has spread to many industries in Iran, has also affected equipment linked to the country's nuclear program, which is at the core of the dispute between Tehran and Western powers like the United States.

Experts in Germany discovered the worm in July, and it has since shown up in a number of attacks — primarily in Iran, Indonesia, India and the U.S.

The malware is capable of taking over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants.

In a sign of the high-level concern in Iran, experts from the country's nuclear agency met last week to discuss ways of fighting the worm.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jam2yTGb8W1t53gQ6S-RbSquSmiAD9IFORD00
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slappy4428 · Sep 27, 2010

I blame Bushehr

Baron Scicluna · Sep 27, 2010

"I gave it a cold."

OnTheRiver · Dec 15, 2014

Give 'em a big jug of HiberNol

Armchair_QB · Sep 27, 2010

Great, this means we're just a few steps away from the Geek Squad going nuclear.

OnTheRiver · Sep 28, 2010

Armchair_QB said:

Great, this means we're just a few steps away from the Geek Squad going nuclear.
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HHGregg will not let that happen.

YankeeFan · Sep 29, 2010

Was it the Israeli's or did someone try to frame them:

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment.

Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. In interviews in several countries, experts in both cyberwar and nuclear enrichment technology say the Stuxnet mystery may never be solved.

There are many competing explanations for myrtus, which could simply signify myrtle, a plant important to many cultures in the region. But some security experts see the reference as a signature allusion to Esther, a clear warning in a mounting technological and psychological battle as Israel and its allies try to breach Tehran’s most heavily guarded project. Others doubt the Israelis were involved and say the word could have been inserted as deliberate misinformation, to implicate Israel.

“The Iranians are already paranoid about the fact that some of their scientists have defected and several of their secret nuclear sites have been revealed,” one former intelligence official who still works on Iran issues said recently. “Whatever the origin and purpose of Stuxnet, it ramps up the psychological pressure.”

So a calling card in the code could be part of a mind game, or sloppiness or whimsy from the coders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/middleeast/30worm.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
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YankeeFan · Nov 20, 2010

Some more information on what's a pretty cool story:

Experts dissecting the computer worm suspected of being aimed at Iran’s nuclear program have determined that it was precisely calibrated in a way that could send nuclear centrifuges wildly out of control.

...

The new forensic work narrows the range of targets and deciphers the worm’s plan of attack. Computer analysts say Stuxnet does its damage by making quick changes in the rotational speed of motors, shifting them rapidly up and down.

Changing the speed “sabotages the normal operation of the industrial control process,” Eric Chien, a researcher at the computer security company Symantec, wrote in a blog post.

Those fluctuations, nuclear analysts said in response to the report, are a recipe for disaster among the thousands of centrifuges spinning in Iran to enrich uranium, which can fuel reactors or bombs. Rapid changes can cause them to blow apart. Reports issued by international inspectors reveal that Iran has experienced many problems keeping its centrifuges running, with hundreds removed from active service since summer 2009.

...

But a study released Friday by Mr. Chien, Nicolas Falliere and Liam O. Murchu at Symantec, concluded that the program’s real target was to take over frequency converters, a type of power supply that changes its output frequency to control the speed of a motor.

The worm’s code was found to attack converters made by two companies, Fararo Paya in Iran and Vacon in Finland. A separate study conducted by the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that finding, a senior government official said in an interview on Thursday.

Then, on Wednesday, Mr. Albright and a colleague, Andrea Stricker, released a report saying that when the worm ramped up the frequency of the electrical current supplying the centrifuges, they would spin faster and faster. The worm eventually makes the current hit 1,410 Hertz, or cycles per second — just enough, they reported, to send the centrifuges flying apart.

In a spooky flourish, Mr. Albright said in the interview, the worm ends the attack with a command to restore the current to the perfect operating frequency for the centrifuges — which, by that time, would presumably be destroyed.

“It’s striking how close it is to the standard value,” he said.

...

Last month, researchers at Symantec also speculated that a string of numbers found in the program — 19790509 — while seeming random, might actually be significant. They speculated that it might refer to May 9, 1979, the day that Jewish-Iranian businessman Habib Elghanian was executed in Iran after being convicted of spying for Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/middleeast/19stuxnet.html?sq=stuxnet&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all
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YankeeFan · Jan 16, 2011

The New York Times on Stuxnet:

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=all
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Bubbler · Jan 17, 2011

I love it, but I wish both the Americans and Israelis would keep their mouths completely shut about it instead of the "wink-wink, nod-nod" we're not doing it, but we are doing it routine.

Who do they think they're fooling?

heyabbott · Jan 17, 2011

Bubbler said:

I love it, but I wish both the Americans and Israelis would keep their mouths completely shut about it instead of the "wink-wink, nod-nod" we're not doing it, but we are doing it routine.

Who do they think they're fooling?
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The perception that you can do something is almost as important as the ability to actually do it. Maybe we want to leave this impression, not only with Iran but the remaining point on the axis of evil, North Korea, as well as Venezuela, China and Russia.

The Big Ragu · Jan 17, 2011

heyabbott said:

Bubbler said:

I love it, but I wish both the Americans and Israelis would keep their mouths completely shut about it instead of the "wink-wink, nod-nod" we're not doing it, but we are doing it routine.

Who do they think they're fooling?
Click to expand...

The perception that you can do something is almost as important as the ability to actually do it. Maybe we want to leave this impression, not only with Iran but the remaining point on the axis of evil, North Korea, as well as Venezuela, China and Russia.
Click to expand...

I don't know about talking about it off the record and then wink winking, as Bubbler, put it. But one of the things I always admired about the Israelis (and there are so many things I detest), is that they have the best secret/covert/sabotage operations in the world, and then their way of handling the aftermath is to neither confirm or deny, or even talk about it. Just do the wink wink, nod nod. So there is no doubt they were the ones, but its just untraceable and so much about their means is left in a shadowy abyss. It's why I was so surprised when the Mosad screwed up that assassination in Dubai and left their finger prints all over it (and video of the perps). It was so uncharacteristic of them, and made me wonder if they had lost a bit off their fastball. If they were able to use intelligence to get enough info about the Iranian processing plants, then reproduce them, and then design and test computer worms that could render the centrifuges bad, they definitely recapture some of their aura (which to me extends only about to the mossad and its abilities; not to a lot of other dumbass things they do to incite even more discontent from the Palestinians and ensure the hostilities continue).

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Stuxnet: Computer Worm Targets Iran Nuke Plant?

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