Stuxnet Infects 30,000 Industrial Computers In Iran

eldavojohn writes "The BBC and AFP are releasing more juicy details about the now infamous Stuxnet worm that Iranian officials have confirmed infected 30,000 industrial computers inside Iran following those exact fears. The targeted systems that the worm is designed to infect are Siemens SCADA systems. Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group, causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States — although the US official claims they do not know the origin of the virus. Iran claims it did not infect or place any risk to the new nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which experts are suspecting was the ultimate target of the worm."

Comments

I think Seimen's comment is funny

[Anonymous Coward]

"Siemens has advised its customers not to change the default passwords"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20011095-83.html
great....good security there

Re:I think Seimen's comment is funny

[thegarbz]

Frankly I'm surprised they give people the option. Lots of vendors have hard coded passwords in their software which are there for vendor only and don't even give you the option of changing them.

this is it

[bhcompy]

The future of diplomacy.

Re:this is it

[buswolley]

I don't know if it is just coincidence, but this morning, my colleague arrived to use our university's Siemens MRI for research. Overheating, pump malfunction errors were popping up everywhere on the GUI like she's never seen before...probably coincidence.

Re:this is it

[MichaelSmith]

...the art of saying nice doggy until your compilation finishes. For what it is worth I don't believe this came from the US. I bet their viruses get in, and send back the product without anybody knowing anything about them.

strange conclusion.

[retchdog]

I think that the serious hacking groups could totally pwn the United States on "cybersecurity" if they bothered.

It pains me to say, that maybe we've forgotten the power of individuals and small groups being dedicated to causes which are directly connected to neither State initiatives, nor immediate profit.

Re:strange conclusion.

[O('_')O_Bush]

Really? Because, as someone who has worked in gov't related cybersecurity, I can tell you that they try all the time.

There's no shortage of reasons for hackers to want access to data (classified or otherwise) really really badly.

You just need to get the hollywood fabricated ideas about teams of small teams of omnipotent superhacker "gods" out of your mind, because they don't exist.

Re:strange conclusion.

[retchdog]

no, of course they aren't omnipotent gods, but on the other hand you don't need to be a god to cause serious damage to human beings. you just need to be intelligent; properly specialized; and oddly motivated. fortunately, the old "pick two of three" rule seems to apply here. :)

I do personally know some security professionals whom I suspect would have a pretty good shot at something like this, if they were both unethical and had a little bit of inside knowledge.

admittedly, most of what i know about US gov't cybersecurity is what i read on slashdot which tends to be negative. so i am biased there. still, it's a bit hasty to assign credit to a state. small groups of the right people could get a lot done. i mean, all you need is the information; this isn't the manhattan project.

Re:strange conclusion.

[cpghost]

i mean, all you need is the information; this isn't the manhattan project.

Getting information was not so difficult, even from within the Manhattan Project. If a government is hellbent on infiltrating secret projects of a rival government, they sure have enough resources at hand.

Re:strange conclusion.

[taxman_10m]

Who said anything about the government? If some other nation really wanted to mess things up in the USA they'd attack banking or something (which is something Russia apparently did to Estonia in 2007 according to wikipedia).

Re:strange conclusion.

[IamTheRealMike]

You just need to get the hollywood fabricated ideas about teams of small teams of omnipotent superhacker "gods" out of your mind, because they don't exist.

Really? How big do you think the team that created Stuxnet is then? Or do you really think that one guy found 4 new zero days, wrote a P2P control mechanism, a custom kernel mode rootkit, a bunch of PLC code in an obscure form of assembly language and a shim DLL to hide the PLC infection from the operator?

The Stuxnet team is the closest thing to the Hollywood stereotype of a small team of omnipotent superhacker gods the world has seen.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Make no mistake, they exist. You just can't find them and therefore believe that if you can't find them, they must not be. Typical of most people.

Re:strange conclusion.

[gad_zuki!]

The stuxnet team is most likely the product of a large intelligence department. That is to say a group effort from a nation state, not some independent hacking gods with nothing better to do.

The point is that expertise in scada, coming up with 4 zero days, getting 2 signed driver keys from JMicron and Realtek, and distributing the exploit without the internet to Iranian factories is not something a non-state can do.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it is written by US gov.

Re:strange conclusion.

[SashaMan]

Uhh, you're missing the GP's point. It's HIGHLY doubtful a small group of scruffy super smart hackers a la Angeline Jolie and friends in "Hackers" created this virus. Given the complexity you point out (and by the way, you missed a very important point - stuxnet utilizes stolen encryption keys from TWO Tiawanese chip manufacturers), it's much more likely that a large, coordinated government or corporate organization that was able to assemble experts from many different fields was behind the attacks.

Re:strange conclusion.

[IamTheRealMike]

So we're arguing about the definition whether the team was "small" or "large" then :-) Given that Stuxnet is around half a megabyte in size, I'd guess the code itself was written by a team of around 5 people, probably with each person owning an area of functionality. Say another 5 for project infrastructure, eg, building testing environments, finding the zero days and doing whatever was required to steal the digital certs.

I'm sure there is a fairly large supporting cast for this "Myrtus/Guava" project, but I'd wager a crisp benjamin the bulk of the work was done by less than 10 people. Now whether this sort of effort is "small" or "large" is a matter of perspective - for a state sponsored military project it'd be very small, for a computer virus project it'd be pretty large.

By the way, if the authors of Stuxnet are reading this - nice work, but I seriously hope you know what the hell you are doing. Remotely sabotaging industrial facilities in a part of the world that's on a political knife edge can go wrong in so many ways I don't even want to think about it.

Re:strange conclusion.

[einhverfr]

There are some strange things that the state-sponsor theory of Stuxnet is at a loss to explain.

The first of these is the P2P update cycle of the worm. One important element of this is that to update the one has to re-seed the network with a new version. However anybody with appropriate skills can do this, so the worm could be easily retooled to strike back at the creator. The idea that a nation would be incompetent enough to allow such a weapon as this to be redirected back at their critical infrastructure doesn't sit well with me.

The second major problem has to do with the fact the virus tends to be digitally signed via stolen private keys of reputable companies from around the globe many of which have no presence in the Middle East. Theft of these private keys is suggestive of a long-term effort probably involving past viruses and trojans.

Also while Iran is a major hotspot of infections they aren't the only ones. Indonesia is a close second.

These things are easy to explain from perspective that assumes a criminal syndicate but hard to explain from the perspective of a theory of state sponsorship.

Stuxnet is groundbreaking in a large number of ways. It's also an interesting question as to whether the malfunctions in the SCADA systems expected under Stuxnet could be similar to those experienced by Deepwater Horizon before the tragic explosion. While it might not be stuxnet in that case, it raises important questions about possible consequences of such a virus. These consequences are significantly more severe for a state sponsor than for a criminal one.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Cylix]

I do all of that while cooking my morning breakfast.

However, I am the most interesting man in the world....

Stay thirsty my friends.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

omnipotent superhacker gods the world has seen.

Ladder logic is NOT that hard. Most of the industrial companies I have worked with there is *MAYBE* 1 or 2 guys who write the whole system. The systems are pretty freeking easy to access. It is all standard control codes (otherwise no tools would work right).

These things are meant to hook together in rings of controllers that act as a unit no matter who you buy the controllers from. Many of the bigger companies such as Siemens even make it pretty easy to glue junk together with their software.

You seriously do not want to know... It is that bad. It is stuuuuuuuuuupid easy to program these things. An okayish programmer could come up with a worm in a couple of months (probably less).

The reason they are this way? You ask? Well it used to be pretty simple. They was no internet for them to get plugged into. No networks. It was all serial connections. There is no access/authentication control response from these things. You didnt want people to have access to these things. You just locked the door to the room they were in. However, over the years remote management became more common. However the access controls were never put into place.

There are millions of these fairly simple (at least compared to todays computers) controllers out there. How they work is *WELL* understood there are dozens upon dozens of websites out there that tell you exactly how to program your controller. Hell you can buy the SDKs from the major companies (they dont cost much).

The only speculation on is who wrote it. Not how easy it is. Those of us who write this sort of software know how easy it is. Then the access controls that are in place are not even very good. They are easy to brute force in under a couple of hours or so (the password space being very small, susceptible to man in the middle attacks for the longer ones, and replay attacks).

It really is as easy as putting the right bytes out on the serial line and poof the other box is reprogrammed. That is how many are programmed in the first place...

When I first started working with industrial controllers I was seriously scared. You should be too. It is that bad. It wouldnt take much. Right now the only thing is cost. As the things these sorts of things plug into cost quite a bit. The controllers are tad on the pricey side (anywhere from 200-1500 each). But the access controls on them are horrible. Making them dead easy to program.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, if the authors of Stuxnet are reading this - nice work, but I seriously hope you know what the hell you are doing. Remotely sabotaging industrial facilities in a part of the world that's on a political knife edge can go wrong in so many ways I don't even want to think about it.

Thanks for the tip. We'll definitely keep that in mind.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

"30,000 industrial computers" is just aluminum chaff dumped into a radar beam's scanning arc. It's probably "Mission Accomplished" for Bushehr.

And cut out this This Side and That Side nonsense. The whole Mideast thing is so polluted the only way to solve it is to start from zero. Ignore all past transgressions. By everybody. But first you have to stop the settlements and that won't happen because Israeli politicians pander for votes. Just like all politicians. Everywhere.

Re:strange conclusion.

[SuricouRaven]

Intelligent or lucky. If you have enough hackers trying long enough, even if they are all script kiddies, sooner or later you're going to get a McKinnon - someone of no special skill who, just by luck, finds exactly the right computers insecure at exactly the right time.

Such people are likely too inexperienced to be using suitably paranoid anti-tracking measures, so you can probably catch them. But it's a bit late by then.

Re:strange conclusion.

[IamTheRealMike]

Also while Iran is a major hotspot of infections they aren't the only ones. Indonesia is a close second.

These things are easy to explain from perspective that assumes a criminal syndicate but hard to explain from the perspective of a theory of state sponsorship.

Well. Let's ignore the problem of motive for now (there are far easier ways for criminals to turn a profit than this) - one has to wonder why Stuxnet is written as a traditional self-propagating virus.

Apparently it has some kind of self-kill logic which tries to ensure it doesn't spread after three "hops", which suggests whoever wrote it didn't want it to become a totally uncontrolled worldwide infection.

Presumably whoever wrote this knew they wouldn't be able to obtain actual physical access to the facility they wanted to damage, nor would they be able to insert an undercover agent, nor would they be able to compromise an existing employee. If you wanted to attack a high security facility and your intelligence agency wasn't able to penetrate it using more traditional techniques, creating a virus that spreads indiscriminately and hoping you get lucky seems like a pretty reasonable strategy.

The truth may be somewhere in the middle. The top candidates are the US and Israel based on "who dislikes Iran the most". Israeli intelligence has proven several times before they apparently don't care about being detected or involving other nations as collateral damage, see the recent UK passport forging that was a part of an assassination. A guy who used to be a director of anti-proliferation strategy for the US government has remarked that the style doesn't seem like a US operation given how much noise the approach would inevitably create, and the tremendous impact outside of the intended target.

Now obviously he is biased, but I'd tend to agree with him. It seems kind of unlikely the US would do something so dramatically non-covert. The way Stuxnet works practically guaranteed it would be eventually detected and subjected to intense scrutiny. The fact that there's so many clues and possible evidence trails lying around also suggests that whoever did it wasn't too concerned with being caught, eg, it's possible the stolen digital certs or the C&C servers will provide a trail that can be investigated.

So out of "countries that hate Iran" which of those is most likely to perform an operation that is very likely to be detected and very likely to piss off a large number of random other nations or organizations? If I had to pick an intelligence agency in the world that most resembled a criminal syndicate, the Mossad would be pretty high up the list. Speculation is fun isn't it.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Alicat1194]

So out of "countries that hate Iran" which of those is most likely to perform an operation that is very likely to be detected and very likely to piss off a large number of random other nations or organizations?

Perhaps it's just the conspiracy theorist in me, but is it possible that Iran isn't the main target of Stuxnet, but just a handy diversion?
If investigations are focused on the attack on Iran, and who would benefit most from it, they may be less likely to look into who would benefit from hurting other targets (such as Indonesia, mentioned by the GP)

Re:strange conclusion.

[IamTheRealMike]

We can't know for sure can we. But we might as well apply Occams Razor. Indonesia doesn't have any enemies that are both technically sophisticated and extremely aggressive. Nor does it have any industrial facilities of obviously high value. Iran has all these things.

It's a good question how so much Stuxnet ended up in Indonesia, but I suspect it's simply bad luck. If the initial infection vector was some kind of industrial contractor, it's easy to imagine that "hop zero" copies of the virus occurred in whatever countries that contractor happened to work in. The virus tries to limit its own propagation but its C&C system is really weak - only two nodes both of which are now offline. Most modern malware has much stronger C&C infrastructure than that. It can do P2P updates as well but that's got to be a slow and flaky way to update the virus. So it appears that the virus was created for a specific task and what happened after that wasn't a big concern.

Re:strange conclusion.

[einhverfr]

Apparently it has some kind of self-kill logic which tries to ensure it doesn't spread after three "hops", which suggests whoever wrote it didn't want it to become a totally uncontrolled worldwide infection.

Do you have a cite for this? Also is it still this way (given the P2P component discussed in a paper on that subject by Symantec)?

So out of "countries that hate Iran" which of those is most likely to perform an operation that is very likely to be detected and very likely to piss off a large number of random other nations or organizations? If I had to pick an intelligence agency in the world that most resembled a criminal syndicate, the Mossad would be pretty high up the list. Speculation is fun isn't it.

Yet Indonesia has a very large number of infections too. Why are you so focused on Iran? It's not like the virus isn't prevalent in other countries as well. It's also hit India a lot harder than Pakistan.

The fact is we could build conspiracy theories out of this any number of ways. However, the fact is that the virus is programmed to REPLACE ITSELF with a new executable if it finds a newer version. Given the fact that Pakistan has not been hit much but India and Iran both have, we might suggest Pakistan the sponsor. However, I'm still assuming Russian cyber-criminals are behind this.

Re:strange conclusion.

[IamTheRealMike]

Searching Google for [stuxnet three hops] gives this analysis.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

MB for complexity? What the fuck? That's like GHz for speed -- there is relation only when you restrict the scenario (e.g. 100% ASM). Apparently you haven't seen any 64KB demos, or 10MB STL+Boost* HelloWorld programs.

* This remark is a detraction of programmer inefficiency, not C++/STL/Boost. It doesn't occur when they are used correctly.

Re:strange conclusion.

[einhverfr]

At this point, nobody else has confirmed this limit, right? Do we know if this affects all versions of Stuxnet? Only some versions? Does it only apply to the sneakerware portion of the attack or does a network attack count as a hop?

The reason I am asking is that the analysis I have seen on that site isn't sufficient to get to the view that it's geographically limited in terms of codebase.

Re:strange conclusion.

[AJWM]

You just need to get the hollywood fabricated ideas about teams of small teams of omnipotent superhacker "gods" out of your mind, because they don't exist.

Not quite in the Hollywood image they don't, no. But assuming that such hacking is beyond the efforts of one or two highly intelligent, knowledgeable and motivated individuals is a big mistake. You just need someone with an IQ in the 150 range who reads manuals and code for fun and thinks so far outside the box he can barely see it from there.

(Some 35 years ago I routinely pwned the campus mainframe, a Burroughs B6700, through a combination of inspired guesswork (giving me access to allocated but unused accounts), dumpster diving (hey, a listing of the OS, that looks interesting. Gee, what's this string "&:*" being passed to a call that expects the [root-equivalent] password?), social engineering (me at a Burroughs sales office: "I'm a student at X, can I get some B6700 manuals?" They: "We don't have any for sale here, but [checks in back] here are some old ones I'll just give you." Systems programmer back at X: "How'd you get those? We can't even get those!") and plain outside the box thinking (Sys programmer: "but you can't edit a Burroughs backup tape!" Me: "not on the Burroughs, no. But on the IBM 360/50..." He: "Oh, shit." Being able to edit a Burroughs backup tape let you (or me) get around the fact that only a program tagged as a compiler could tag a binary file as executable, and only an operator console command could tag a program as a compiler. But if you could create your own arbitrary executable binaries, you had access to all kinds of system calls normally reserved to the OS.) Of course those were more naive, innocent times, pre Morris worm, and terms like "dumpster diving" and "social engineering" hadn't been coined yet. It's a little harder these days (back then I was barely even trying), but there are better tools available, so don't fool yourself. Script kiddies are one thing -- it's the folks inventing those scripts, or rather, the ones who invent scripts the kiddies never see, that you need to worry about.)

Re:strange conclusion.

[AJWM]

so the worm could be easily retooled to strike back at the creator. The idea that a nation would be incompetent enough to allow such a weapon as this to be redirected back at their critical infrastructure doesn't sit well with me.

Actually that sort of incompetence strikes me as more the sort of thing a state-sponsored effort might miss as compared to a the efforts of a small group used to thinking in terms of vulnerabilities. I.e. it suggests that the group who found the exploits is different from the group who implemented the hack, which suggests a more distributed effort.

Or it could just be a small group who don't give a rat's ass about anybody's infrastructure, including their own.

Re:strange conclusion.

[einhverfr]

Or it could just be a small group who don't give a rat's ass about anybody's infrastructure, including their own.

A small group probably doesn't have a lot of Siemens PLC's in use......

Re:strange conclusion.

[retchdog]

That's true but sort of the converse of what I was trying to say. Sorry for the confusion. I agree that a government could do this, but I don't see how it's necessarily too complicated for a group of skilled and motivated activists.

What I meant was, hacking doesn't take particle accelerators or other expensive components. Even if you had the information from the manhattan project, you'd need roomfuls of specialized and dangerous equipment and materials and a large diversely trained staff.

All you need for something like stuxnet is a smaller group of the "right" people and the right information, and maybe a hatful of money for PCs and some specialized hardware. I mean, I personally know people who do static analysis of computer viruses for fun. This doesn't make them virus writers - it makes them better than virus writers, if given enough time to adapt their reverse-engineering skills to reverse-reverse-engineering. Put them in a room with one or two hardware and microcode engineers with knowledge of the target Siemens chip, and I don't see how this project would not basically write itself in a month or so. What am I missing here?

It doesn't require state or massive corporate investment, so I don't see the basis for ruling out the hypothesis of a group of hacker/security activists.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're arguing about ... whether ... "small" or "large"

MINES 12 INCHES LONG AND NO ONE CAN PROVE ME WRONG.

Re:strange conclusion.

[amicusNYCL]

It's HIGHLY doubtful a small group of scruffy super smart hackers a la Angeline Jolie and friends in "Hackers"

Did you just call Angelina Jolie "scruffy"?

Re:strange conclusion.

[Will.Woodhull]

I agree. Stuxnet, and who knows what will follow it, are similar to the USA Skunkworks that managed to develop and deploy the SR-71 Blackbird in complete secrecy, or before that the Manhattan Project in the USA, and the Enigma work done in Great Britain.

We have a new player on the world stage, and data security is never going to be the same again. Actually we probably have more than one new player, since there are a probably a dozen countries that are capable of doing this kind of thing. And quite possibly they've been around for a long time, hiding behind spammer botnet facades, etc. I find it suspicious that while spammer botnets are supposed to be making their fortunes by selling advertising, there has never been a serious effort to go after the companies that are apparently buying these services. I wonder how many distributors of v14gRuh there really are, and how many are virtual fronts for information gathering and disinformation distribution activities?

Hmm. I prolly read too much Philip K Dick in a younger day.

Re:strange conclusion.

[dachshund]

The point is that expertise in scada, coming up with 4 zero days, getting 2 signed driver keys from JMicron and Realtek, and distributing the exploit without the internet to Iranian factories is not something a non-state can do.

Organized crime could theoretically do it, if they decided to invest in developing the necessary technical resources rather than just shooting people. However, organized crime would not do it without an obvious profit motive, especially given the risks (that governments might tie it to them, etc.). There does not seem to be any such motive in this case.

Re:strange conclusion.

[tqk]

Um, no, the first culprit to look at is Iran itself. Shoot self in foot ...

Re:strange conclusion.

[Nyder]

Really? Because, as someone who has worked in gov't related cybersecurity, I can tell you that they try all the time.

There's no shortage of reasons for hackers to want access to data (classified or otherwise) really really badly.

You just need to get the hollywood fabricated ideas about teams of small teams of omnipotent superhacker "gods" out of your mind, because they don't exist.

Wait, you saying my religon where i worship superhacker gods is fake?

That is hard dude, really hard.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Cassius Corodes]

Apparently the sheer sophistication and amount of code, the use of multiple zero day exploits, plus a number of fake certificates all point to an operation outside of the resources of a small team. Likewise the payload seems to be specifically targeted at a particular set-up of a PLC seems to point to sabotage/intelligence gathering rather than blackmail/extortion.

Re:strange conclusion.

[ejp]

Government workers go home at 5 PM. And take off weekends. 17 year old kids do not. Just from my experience, no matter who they are.

Re: strange conclusion.

[Black Parrot]

It seems kind of unlikely the US would do something so dramatically non-covert.

Like mine the harbors of another country while at peace...

Re:strange conclusion.

[mikael_j]

The only speculation on is who wrote it. Not how easy it is. Those of us who write this sort of software know how easy it is.

This. Really, while I haven't worked with these particular systems I have taken courses on how to program similar systems (in an environment where real hardware and software was used and the problems given to us to solve were all "real" problems that those arranging the course had encountered themselves) and I don't really remember it being all that hard. There was documentation for pretty much everything available (and if the manufacturers of the equipment didn't want to hand out docs and hardware practically for free there were apparently plenty of companies using said gear that would happily hand over docs and gear for free just so they'd have an easier time finding new employees).

Now, after PLCs and industrial robot programming we went over to microprocessor programming (68HC11 asm to be more specific) and that's when a lot of the students seemed to start having problems, even those who had no problems with the previous parts of the course. That should give anyone who understands HC11 asm an idea of how hard it really is.

Re:strange conclusion.

[geggo98]

Really? How big do you think the team that created Stuxnet is then? Or do you really think that one guy found 4 new zero days, wrote a P2P control mechanism, a custom kernel mode rootkit, a bunch of PLC code in an obscure form of assembly language and a shim DLL to hide the PLC infection from the operator?

Don't forget the fake kernel drivers signed with a stolen certificate. Stealing or breaking the digital certificate used by JMicron to sign Windows kernel drivers should be out of range for even a skilled single hacker.

Oh and apparently there was a second certificate stolen/broken, this time from Realtek.

This thing is really scary. Even when you follow best practice for security in every detail, you would have no protection against something like Stuxnet.

Re:strange conclusion.

[h4rm0ny]

(back then I was barely even trying)

This, in combination with the parts of your post that preceded it, is one of the funniest things I've seen on /. this month. If the Earth needs defending against aliens, I'm calling you. ;)

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Respect.

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran
Indonesia
India

... I see a pattern here. if(countryname[0]='I') ...

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is your manager. Get back to work!

Re:strange conclusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Symantec has reported an industrial pipeline explosion caused by malicious hacking (in this case apparently source was directly modified). http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/stuxnet-introduces-first-known-rootkit-scada-devices

At any rate It is criminally negligent to run critical control systems under any version of Windows. Siemens knows better but perhaps they are going (or have gone) the way of other former engineering corporations (HP, GE, US auto manufacturers, Lockheed-Martin, etc) and have become a financing / management corporation with engineering and esp. software engineering relegated to relative unimportance.

Re:strange conclusion.

[dbIII]

How about a state with some rogue agencies that act like a criminal syndicate or are working in association with one? History turns up a few of those we know about just about everywhere. Also, assuming no criminal involvement, how many agencies with international aims really care about blowback anyway since that's going to be somebody else's problem? The finger only gets pointed at Israel only because it looked like they had a death squad active in Dubai recently. People pointing to Israel for this one are only guessing.

Re:strange conclusion.

[hesaigo999ca]

really, i guess the 409 crew is a myth then?

Re:strange conclusion.

[AJWM]

one of the funniest things I've seen on /. this month. If the Earth needs defending against aliens, I'm calling you. ;)

Heh, thanks!

(Speaking of funny and defending against aliens, you might like my story "The Gremlin Gambit", see my stories page.)

Bushehr as target

[Jurily]

I read somewhere that there are no Siemens systems in Bushehr, making that particular plant immune to this worm. Is that true?

Re:Bushehr as target

[trapnest]

Where could you possibly read something like that?

Re:Bushehr as target

[Zocalo]

There was a screenshot posted that was purported to be the Bushehr plant's control systems shortly after the claims that it was the target of Stuxnet first appeared. SIMATIC WinCC is Siemens' SCADA front-end tool for Windows clients, so either this image is of another nuclear plant or Bushehr does indeed use Siemens software.

In any event, in the early analyses of Stuxnet, that the target was Bushehr was speculative based on:

• The high number of infections in Iran
• That the software was so complicated and targeted at very specific PLCs within a Siemens SCADA environment implying a particular installation was being targeted
• That the second point above in turn implied that a nation state that had acquired inside knowledge about the target was behind the worm, although which one wasn't even speculated at
• Bushehr was believed to have experienced some kind of technical issue within a suitable time frame

Assuming the screenshot and target of Stuxnet are both Bushehr, then I don't actually know which is worse; that someone would trust apparently pirated software to run a nuclear plant, or that someone would deliberately try to disrupt the operations of one...

Re:Bushehr as target

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually I prefer the theory that it went after the centrifuges at Natanz.

On July 17, 2009 WikiLeaks posted a cryptic notice:

Two weeks ago, a source associated with Iran’s nuclear program confidentially told WikiLeaks of a serious, recent, nuclear accident at Natanz. Natanz is the primary location of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. WikiLeaks had reason to believe the source was credible however contact with this source was lost. WikiLeaks would not normally mention such an incident without additional confirmation, however according to Iranian media and the BBC, today the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, has resigned under mysterious circumstances. According to these reports, the resignation was tendered around 20 days ago.

... and from the same article ...

A cross-check with the official Iran Students News Agency archives confirmed the resignation of the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

According to official IAEA data, the number of actually operating centrifuges in Natanz shrank around the time of the accident Wikileaks wrote about was reduced substantially .

Re:Bushehr as target

[fava]

There is an analysis of the screenshot at http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/396-No-Nukes.html

The conclusion is that it is probably a screenshot of a wast water treatment plan, not a nuke facility.

Re:Bushehr as target

[ColdWetDog]

Interestingly, the photographer (or at least someone logging in under his name) states that the photo is real. Hard to tell. It's in English, but that isn't all that surprising given that the contractor is Russian and the Iranians don't necessarily speak Russian - English would be the usual 'common' language. It does seem to be a water treatment process, but nuclear reactors located in the middle of nowhere might include such functions.

The fun part about the picture is the popup "Your software license has expired". A commenter on the blog noted that use of non licensed software was common before the system was completed and turned over to the customer. Maybe we should alert the Iranian version of the Business Software Alliance and arrange for an 'inspection'.

Re:Bushehr as target

[WrongSizeGlass]

Where could you possibly read something like that?

In the Bushehr Times, the leading state-run newspaper in Bushehr with a full want-ads section and comics as recent as 'The Far Side'. Good reading if you can stomach the heavy-handed use of commas and semicolons.

Re:Bushehr as target

[Sulphur]

Where could you possibly read something like that?

In the Bushehr Times, the leading state-run newspaper in Bushehr with a full want-ads section and comics as recent as 'The Far Side'. Good reading if you can stomach the heavy-handed use of commas and semicolons.

Grammar Nazis start with commas and semicolons.

Re:Bushehr as target

[wiredlogic]

If you read the comments, someone claiming to be the photographer refutes all of the claims that it is a fake. Yes it is a wastewater treatment schematic but it is a part of the Bushehr plant. The fact that everything is in English doesn't rule out the possibility of this being from Iran since English is the dominant language for technical interchange and would be the lingua franca of choice for collaborating engineers from different nations. The claim that the software couldn't be from the US because it uses metric readings is also silly. It indicates the author's susceptibility to false reasoning.

Re:Bushehr as target

[thegarbz]

Assuming the screenshot and target of Stuxnet are both Bushehr, then I don't actually know which is worse; that someone would trust apparently pirated software to run a nuclear plant, or that someone would deliberately try to disrupt the operations of one...

As someone who is involved with these kinds of systems, there's no way you would pirate software like this. Typically you can't buy this gear in isolation without a complete support agreement which often includes a lot of software to go with it. Some vendors even give away the software for free knowing it'll only run on their hardware. This kind of licence key issue is more likely due to a cock-up during the commissioning stage. God knows I've seen plenty of those, or maybe just an IT issue. I wasn't able to start AutoCAD on my work machine all of last week because of some issue with a licence server. Or someone didn't read the instructions and never setup the licensing server.

Re:Bushehr as target

[l0b0]

His conclusion from the graph is not sound at all - Only a small percentage of the centrifuges went offline at the time. At the same time, they received lots of new centrifuges for installation, so it seems to me that work was simply diverted to installing those.

Re:Bushehr as target

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is disrupting the operations of a nuclear power plant so deeply disturbing to you? The Bushehr plant is a light-water reactor, which simply cannot "blow up" and contaminate the environment (though they can still melt down, of course.) This is because of the design. A "breeder reactor" is designed to create (breed) more fuel by using emitted radiation to turn Uranium 238 into Uranium 235 (fuel grade uranium.) To achieve significant amounts, however, the fuel in a breeder reactor has to be highly enriched. This leads to a possible worst-case scenario in a meltdown- fuel melting out of the fuel rods, collecting at the bottom of the containment vessel, is impacted by a glob of melting fuel coming from the fuel rods above. Wham-bam-thank-you-mam, a primitive, accidental replica of the first Atom-Bomb's "gun-type" detonator has occurred.

This 'blast' still wouldn't be very big- it'd seriously damage the facility, but no more. The point is, though, that such an explosion might be enough to punch a hole in the concrete containment dome (which can generally withstand almost anything,) thus releasing that radiation all over.

A light water reactor, however, uses fuel that's far less enriched, so even if globs of melting fuel were to start smacking into each other, they wouldn't be able to produce a hiccup that could blow a hole in the concrete containment dome, the last failsafe. (Pop the lid off the reactor vessel, yes, but widespread death? No.)

There's another lesson here- the Bushehr plant was most certainly not the target of the worm, because it's not a breeder plant. Nuclear waste from it can make a nasty "dirty bomb," but considering that refinement centrifuges can make weapons-grade materiel, and the plant cannot, the centrifuges are most certainly the higher-value target. I'm mystified that people are considering the power plant at all.

Re:Bushehr as target

[Anonymous Coward]

has resigned under mysterious circumstances.

What you mean to say is: "taken out back and shot in the head".

I don't even see how

[Anonymous Coward]

How do those trojans spread? Isn't virtually every Windows client box behind a firewall these days? Or are mostly Windows Server OS affected?

Re:I don't even see how

[Dan667]

usb thumb drives.

Re:I don't even see how

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. In Iran it'd be USB thumbscrew drives

Re:I don't even see how

[ColdWetDog]

usb thumb drives.

More like middle finger drives.

Re:I don't even see how

[confused one]

a nuke plant in the U.S. was infected a while back... The contractor bypassed the firewall and hooked the system to their computers via a network connection while they were debugging the software. This inadvertently created a connection between the internal protected systems at the nuclear plant and the wide-open, wild and wooly internet. Fortunately, the plant was shut down for maintenance and no critical systems were infected.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Old news, all info listed here has been known for weeks.

Not so bad of a result

[DoofusOfDeath]

If Iran really is trying to develop a nuclear weapons ability, then they're heading for a nasty conflict one way or another.

If conflict is inevitable, then it's probably far better for their computers to catch a nasty flu, than for people do due in a U.S./Israeli airstrike.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[DoofusOfDeath]

than for people do due

I meant "than for people to die..."

Muscle-memory is a bitch.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

it's probably far better for their computers to catch a nasty flu and launch a nuclear attack, than for people do due in a U.S./Israeli airstrike.

FTFY

oh... shit!

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Dan667]

intersting it is totally ok for israel to have nukes. When is israel going to have weapon inspectors and give them up? If there really was interest in getting this stopped that would be the first step.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

When is israel going to have weapon inspectors and give them up?

When Israel signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Beelzebud]

I love the double standard! So, if that's the case, then people should STFU about Iran building anything, considering they haven't signed that treaty either...

Re:Not so bad of a result

[DoofusOfDeath]

intersting it is totally ok for israel to have nukes.

If you think I was implying that it's okay for Israel to stop Iran's nuke problem, that wasn't my point at all.

My point was much more generic and simple: all things being equal, I'd rather computers get viruses than that people die in an airstrike.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

I love the double standard! So, if that's the case, then people should STFU about Iran building anything, considering they haven't signed that treaty either...

Iran signed 1 July 1968. What was that about a double standard and STFU?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but it is generally prudent to stop crazed assholes* with the stated goals of wiping other states from the map from having any such weapons.

*Please note that this is not directed at the Iranian people - most of whom are probably your everyday normal person - but at the government that is in power there.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[GeekLove]

I love the double standard! So, if that's the case, then people should STFU about Iran building anything, considering they haven't signed that treaty either...

Are you really that flipping naive? Israel is using nukes as a deterrent, defensive weapon, which has so far worked. Iran has stated that they want to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth," http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran and would probably use nukes as an offensive weapon, at least that is my interpretation of "burn in the fire of Islamic fury." So GFY before you tell people to STFU!

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Lemmy Caution]

There was a little revolution between then and now: the CIA-created Shah regime signed that treaty. And, of course, parties are free to leave the NNPT whenever they like: that's how treaties work.

Iran is one of the best examples of "blowback" out there.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

Interesting you don't mention how that government came to be in the first place.

By the way, revolutions apparently have nothing to do with treaties signed. Otherwise Russia would not have to follow any the USSR signed. And, as you said, Iran can leave the NNPT any time it wants.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[DoofusOfDeath]

True, but it is generally prudent to stop crazed assholes* with the stated goals of wiping other states from the map from having any such weapons.

You mean the Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Ahmadinejad never said that. The quote is a mistranslation and has mendaciously used as propaganda by Zionists and useful idiots as proof of Iran's alleged destructive intentions.

If you bothered to read the entire page you linked to, the Guardian published a retraction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/apr/23/corrections-clarifications

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Thing 1]

Please take some time to think about the colloquialisms that you use. "All thing" are never "equal". The root of this phrase comes from the debugging process, "I'll change just this one variable and see what the results are" -- in other words, changing one variable and leaving everything else the same. "All other things being equal" is the correct phrase. And regardless of how many people start using the phrase "all things being equal" we'll never come to see all thing actually being equal (at least, not until the heat death of the universe).

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Beelzebud]

Way to use a mistranslation to prove your point...

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

What about crazed Israeli leaders?

Martin van Creveld is a Israeli historian and researcher -

In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier (Dutch weekly) on Israel and the dangers it faces from Iran, the Palestinians and world opinion van Creveld stated:

We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force.... We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.[4]

(emphasis added)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_van_Creveld#Views_on_current_affairs

Assuming he is correct, and I have no reason to doubt him given his credentials, does this sound like the position of a rational, cooperative, civilized nation-state?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[ultranova]

Iran has stated that they want to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth"

And considering Israel's history of attacking and occupying its neighbours and shooting rockets at residential buildings, suppressing all criticism with accusations of antisemitism, and likely being the initiators of this virus, who can blame Iran?

I wouldn't want Israel to be next door to me either; would you?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that I was moderated down, despite the fact that my comment is 100% accurate.

Would the moderator who did this have the courage to explain themselves and explain why they modded up the parent comment that posted a false claim based on a faulty translation?

Is there some reason why you see the need to suppress the truth and then try to promote a lie above it?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[phantomfive]

It's not a double standard, it's a self-centered standard. I am opposed to countries like Iran, who have special holidays for hating my country, getting nuclear weapons. I don't want people who have declared themselves enemies of my country to have nuclear weapons. Unfair? Yes. Do I care, not really. Sometimes there are more important things than fairness (and real fairness in life is impossible anyway).

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Xaositecte]

If Israel really wanted to wipe out the Palestinians, they could do it without Nukes.

Surrounding Islamic countries however, have repeatedly attempted to wipe out Israel without nukes, and failed. Historical record implies if they had access to nukes, they'd use them.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's not a double standard, it's a self-centered standard."

There is no difference.

"Unfair? Yes. Do I care, not really. Sometimes there are more important things than fairness (and real fairness in life is impossible anyway)."

Ironic, really, this is ironic.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[DoofusOfDeath]

If Israel really wanted to wipe out the Palestinians, they could do it without Nukes.

Perhaps, but rounding them up into a massive concentration camp because they wanted some lebensraum isn't so swell, either.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Xaositecte]

"the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time"

is still a pretty inflammatory quote.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Xaositecte]

How often have surrounding Arab states invaded Israel?

How often has Israel invaded surrounding Arab states?

Historical records do not agree with your statements.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

huh what?
is your argument actually, "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" is somehow not a verbose way of saying " we must destroy Israel."
  ???

Re:Not so bad of a result

[SuricouRaven]

That's shooting rockets *back* as residential buildings. Hamas started on that one - they thought that if they launched their own rockets from residential or public buildings, Israel would be too afraid of the bad PR to risk counterattacking the launch sites. It partially worked.

Israel is not a good neighbour - but their actions are not unprovoked. They have to live with a seemingly endless stream of rockets being fired into their own residential areas over the border, frequent attempts at suicide or car-bomb attacks, and neighbours who routinely say that all jews should be exterminated. Given the circumstances, you can't really blame them for reacting so strongly.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[rchh]

I don't know why this post is moderated down. The Guardian "retraction" points that the literal translation is "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time". IMHO, the sentiment issued is not far from "wipe Israel from the face of the earth".

Re:Not so bad of a result

[phantomfive]

Ironic, really, this is ironic.

It would be, if it weren't so commonplace. Do I feel bad about deposing Mosaddegh in Iran? Sure, that was a bad idea. If Iran wanted reparations for that, I wouldn't be opposed. Does that mean Iran should automatically be allowed to get a nuclear bomb? Of course not. No one in the region wants them to get the bomb. There are a lot of reasons to try to prevent it, especially with non-violent means like sanctions, that could avert serious crisis.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[theshowmecanuck]

Martin van Creveld is a Israeli historian and researcher

Yes he is. That is, he is a citizen and is a historian and researcher, and is entitled to his own opinion. Let me say the key part again, *his own opinion*. He is not part of the Israeli government. And in case you forgot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said "Israel should be wiped off the map", well he IS the PRESIDENT of Iran. It sounds like you are not clear on or don't understand the subtleties of a citizen making a statement and the head of state of a country making a similar statement. There are many people who advocate turning "Iran into a glass parking lot." Just do a Google search for that last phrase that I put in quotes. You'll find many (although not exclusively) are Americans. However, as citizens of America, the weight we put behind what they say is far, far less than if The President of the U.S.A. were to say it. So even if you are correct as to what Creveld said, it is not rational to assume that it is the Israeli government's position. However I don't doubt that the Israelis would retaliate in kind if they were attacked, against their attackers. Netanyahu said, 'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'. Since I haven't seen any Israeli suicide bombers and no Israeli jihads, nor Israeli hijackers flying into buildings lately, I tend to believe this is true.

I know it is currently popular to jump on the Israeli bashing bandwagon. But remember, if the Arab leaders in 1948 hadn't told the Palestinians to leave Israel so that the surrounding countries could attack Israel, we wouldn't have this situation to begin with. Read documented history and not propaganda. There never was a country with a distinct government called Palestine, ever.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

How often have surrounding Arab states invaded Israel?

How often has Israel invaded surrounding Arab states?

Historical records do not agree with your statements.

iran is not an arab state... pedantry though it may be...

the fact is that the usa has shown all the willingness in the world to invade 'rogue states' without nukes... but n.korea... sinking ships and menacing seoul and american troops with hundreds of rocket batteries... not so much.. the iranians would be fools to not develop a nuclear capability if within their power... israel as a zionist state (for jews) has a limited window of viability... that's demographic inevitability.... i understand the politics of israel as that of a very insecure state.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Jedi Alec]

Assuming he is correct, and I have no reason to doubt him given his credentials, does this sound like the position of a rational, cooperative, civilized nation-state?

Isn't what he is saying pretty much what MAD is all about? The moment anyone uses a nuke, we *all* die, hence no one uses nukes.

Besides, if a people gets kicked all over the planet for 2000 years and blamed for every wrong in the world I can't really fault them for making it extremely clear what's gonna happen the next time someone tries to wipe them out. Shame we haven't quite figured out that we(being the western world) are moving towards pushing the Muslims in the same direction and there's a heck of a lot more of them...

Re:Not so bad of a result

[wall0159]

Err, didn't the surrounding Arab states attack Israel in the days/weeks after the British left? My understanding is that they "threw the first punch"

(I'm no Israel apologist -- plenty of blame for the current mess rests on their shoulders also, IMO)

Re:Not so bad of a result

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Interesting you don't mention how that government came to be in the first place.

Interesting how that article mostly ignores the influence of the USA in the events, unlike this one.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

How often have surrounding Arab states invaded Israel?

How often has Israel invaded surrounding Arab states?

Historical records do not agree with your statements.

Israel's creation was an invasion of an Arab state. I know that it's been a while since it's been created and by nowadays many people say that we should just accept its existence but lets not forget that since Israel's creation its borders have done nothing but grow.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran is not an Arab state.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Given the circumstances, you can't really blame them for reacting so strongly.

Given the terrible imprecision of the Hamas rockets, most of them don't even come close to any Israeli settlements - not even the illegal ones. Heck, if the Israelis had anything to worry about, it's the mortar attacks - far more frequent and precise. But that simply doesn't sell as well.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[phantomfive]

but lets not forget that since Israel's creation its borders have done nothing but grow.

Except when they've shrunk. Like when they unilaterally shut down the settlements in Gaza. But why let facts get in the way of your Israel bashing?

If Palestine could make a credible commitment to peace, there would be a settlement within a year. Israelis don't want to keep watching over Palestinians like they have to now.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

I'm missing where it says the US did anything until well after the Shah was already removed.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dave420]

He never said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. That is a much-repeated bad translation, which people loved because it sounded so dangerous. He was merely hoping for the end of the Zionist Israeli government.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dave420]

He didn't say he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. That was a clumsy translation that has been frequently pointed out as such, but it seems some people just don't want to listen.

The rest of your bullshit is just childish.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dave420]

Are you still learning English? That statement is about as far from inflammatory as possible. It's poetic if anything, conjuring up a future time when the current bullshit Israeli regime is a long-distant memory, and not at all important.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dave420]

How often has a new state been carved out of Israel, against the wishes of Israel?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Xaositecte]

It's sorta've like the difference between "Go die" and "Please go die."

the message is still clear.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[cheesybagel]

Not necessarily. Ever heard the expression "if you want peace, prepare for war?". By making an attack on Iran highly costly to the invading army, Iran can deter a land invasion. For this application they do not even need a sophisticated delivery vehicle. Knowing the recent history of Iran I am pretty certain they would be willing to use nuclear weapons in their own territory if it came to it.

The issue at stake here is that Iran is not merely interested in defending their own territory. They want to have global influence. This is shown by their support of Hamas. This makes the possibility of some of the weapons getting out of Iran and being used all that more likely.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[cheesybagel]

The Gaza Strip isn't that far off from being a concentration camp. But it is not a death camp.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[DoofusOfDeath]

The Gaza Strip isn't that far off from being a concentration camp. But it is not a death camp.

That's true. But just becuase the Palestinians aren't being killed outright, doesn't remotely justify what Israel continues to do to them.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Jeremi]

Unfair? Yes. Do I care, not really.

Of course. But on the other hand, if you are trying to be a world leader and convince other nations to "do the right thing", it helps not to be seen as a cynical hypocrite who says one thing and does another. So yeah, you can play the realpolitik games, just don't be very surprised when other countries follow suit.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[demiurg]

Settlers have guns at most, not nuclear missiles. Every country has extremists, but not every country is ruled by extremists.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Jeremi]

Iran has stated that they want to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth," [...] and would probably use nukes as an offensive weapon

For all their many faults, the Iranian government is no more of a suicide pact than the USSR government was in the 1980s. Iran's government is as aware of how MAD works as anyone.

As for what motivates Iran to acquire nuclear weapons: consider what happened to their next-door neighbor, who didn't get nuclear weapons in time. Compare that to the odds of a similar invasion happening to North Korea, who does have nukes. So, one obvious reason why Iran would want nuclear weapons is to deter a US invasion.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he didn't say that - http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/apr/23/corrections-clarifications

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

He was referring to the regime, not the land and it's people. If you've ever listened to Ahmadinejad over the years (outside of manufactured quotes and commentary from the controlled media), that has been consistently his theme.

Yes, none of us here are mind readers. Maybe he secretly wants to burn all Jews alive, but there is nothing that he actually has said to suggest he wants to do that. For all we know Barack Obama is an al-Qaeda symapthizing Muslim, but that's just about as likely.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[phantomfive]

There are worse things than being a hypocrite. Few people in this world aren't.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's not the same thing as him wanting to nuke Israel and all it's people in some act of mass genocide like the media and Zionist pundits want everyone to believe.

It's pretty clear that the guy is a big anti-Zionist, but he has been careful to note the difference between being opposed to Zionism and being opposed to the right of Jewish people to be alive.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's saying that if Europe ever turns its back on Israel and lets Israel become overrun by its neighbors/enemies to the point where Israel's own existence becomes a doubt, Israel will launch nuclear missiles at all of the European capitals and who knows where else before the government falls.

I'll re-quote Creveld for you:

We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under

And we're supposed to trust these fanatics with nuclear missiles with absolutely no accountability and demands for inspections whatsoever?

Could it be that our world leaders' support for Israel is at least in part due to existential blackmail?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[theshowmecanuck]

Bullshit? Go fuck yourself. That is a good enough response to someone who name calls because he can't stand the truth. Even the former Syrian president from 1948 admitted it was a mistake to tell the Palestinians to leave. Stick with your populist bullshit, moron.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are incapable of understanding the difference between wanting to wish away the Israel government and wanting to wish away the entire Israel people? The difference is critical.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[theshowmecanuck]

"the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time

As if this doesn't mean the same thing as wipe Israel from the map. And just last week this guy tried to tell the world that the U.S. was responsible for flying the planes into the world trade centre. And he is the president of a country, not just a normal citizen.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

"There was a little revolution between then and now: the CIA-created Shah regime signed that treaty. And, of course, parties are free to leave the NNPT whenever they like: that's how treaties work."

So? And citation needed then. When did Iran leave the NNPT if, as you say, they can do so at any time?

They didn't. They've had ample opportunity over the past 3 decades to leave the NNPT. They chose not to.

In fact, often times, they allow inspectors in, to comply with the NNPT. So you might want to educate yourself on the conflict a little more.

Iran sees itself in compliance with the treaty (and it can be argued they have, in fact, complied). The US and other nations do not want Iran to have nukes *at all* and even frown against nuclear development.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Revolutions don't exempt you from international treaties.

If Iran is so damned intent on obtaining nuclear capability (for military or civilian purposes) and not wanting to catch flak for it, just withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Otherwise its just a blatant violation of the treaty.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I'm missing where it says the US did anything until well after the Shah was already removed.

Which one? Did you even read it? Or rather - did you understand it?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[tsm_sf]

When both parties are involved in targeting and hiding behind civilian populations, "he started it" ceases to carry any weight.

Both groups are acting like total fuckheads. Please don't ask which fuckhead we prefer.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[jd]

You do need to consider the bit in between World War II and the monarchy that was overthrown by the Iranian "Revolution":

In 1951, the Majlis (Parliament of Iran) named Mohammad Mossadegh as new prime minister by a vote of 79-12, who shortly after nationalized the British-owned oil industry (see Abadan Crisis). Mossadegh was opposed by the Shah who feared a resulting oil embargo imposed by the west would leave Iran in economic ruin. The Shah fled Iran but returned when the United Kingdom and United States staged a coup against Mossadegh in August 1953 (see Operation Ajax). Mossadegh was then arrested by pro-Shah army forces.

Now, it is certainly true that the prior government, run by Reza Shah, tended to be sympathetic to Germany. But, let's face it, prior to entry into the war, so were Britain and America. This doesn't mean such attitudes were correct - far from it - but you cannot sanely interpret the actions of anyone out of context. The context of the time was that Germany was extremely popular and was a major player in technology and science. (German was one of the established "scientific" languages of the time, along with Russian. Scientists often knew both.)

Also consider that when Germany and Britain went to war, Britain "insisted that German engineers and technicians in Iran were spies with missions to sabotage British oil facilities in southwestern Iran". In short, charges that absolutely no government in the world would believe or respond to - even if true. And, frankly, it's doubtful it was true, at least at that point. The oil facilities would be far too valuable intact, given the limited resources available at the start of the war. Hitler's strategy at that time could be summed up as capturing the maximum resources in the shortest possible time. Blowing up perfectly good refineries in 1939 would not seem to go along with this. Britain wasn't helping matters by being pushy - they'd spent much of the Quajar Dynasty dividing Persia between themselves and Russia. They might have done better to have left well enough alone until Germany pushed further, then used Iran's fears of imperial nations to convince the Shah that it was only a matter of time before he'd be overrun as well.

This doesn't mean I think the guy was the smartest cookie in the block. Quite the opposite. By the time Russia had entered the war, it should have been obvious to any idiot that Germany had no intention of stopping. Ok, it wasn't obvious to America either, as they were still supplying Germany at that time. There was no official embargo on Germany until the Germans torpedoed a civilian liner with American passengers (the effectiveness of which is dubious) and no active support by America towards the allies until Japan attacked them. Blindness and apathy were very popular traits of the day.

As far as I'm concerned, ALL nations (Iran included) are responsible in their own ways and to their own degree for the current mess. The only way anything is going to get done is by them ALL accepting responsibility for their share of the situation and by collectively working to fix it. The moment you allow for the possibility of an exception or an excuse by so much as a single country, the moment you create a get-out clause, is the moment you provide the next wanna-be Emperor with a pretext for invading. Name me one Emperor (or wannabe) that hasn't had some excuse at the ready in order to get things started.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[tukang]

It's not a double standard, it's a self-centered standard. I am opposed to countries like Iran, who have special holidays for hating my country, getting nuclear weapons. I don't want people who have declared themselves enemies of my country to have nuclear weapons. Unfair? Yes. Do I care, not really. Sometimes there are more important things than fairness (and real fairness in life is impossible anyway).

But it's not a self-centered standard. What you fail to realize is that the two issues are intrinsically linked. Anytime nuclear weapons are acquired by a state, their enemies will attempt to seek them, too.

This happened with the US - Russia and it happened with India - Pakistan. Israel's introduction of nuclear weapons to the mid-east region is a catalyst for other nations - nations which we don't like - to also create nuclear weapons, so if you care about Iran and other nations not having nukes then you should also care about Israel not having them because it's a huge motivator.

The mideast issue is complex but I think most people will agree that it's a good idea to take a step back and least agree to take nuclear weapons out of the equation.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[poopdeville]

Russia does not have to follow USSR treaties. But renegotiation is pointless, if since they don't have the bargaining power the USSR did...

Re:Not so bad of a result

[phantomfive]

Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons :)

Seriously, I have no problem with your proposition, especially if the other middle-east countries will agree to not threaten Israel.

At the same time, Israel is not the reason Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons. And also at the same time, the other countries in the middle east have much more fear of Iran getting nuclear weapons than Israel. Iran getting nuclear weapons would be much more destabilizing.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[phantomfive]

Incidentally, Iran and Israel aren't really enemies, except Iran chose to be. There is no natural reason for Iran to be an enemy of Israel, and if it weren't for their attempt to get nuclear weapons, they would in no way be threatened by Israel. This is a fight of Iran's choosing.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[kocsonya]

> Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said "Israel should be wiped off the map"

Except that he didn't say that. Western news agencies said that he had said that, due to being morons who could not hire someone who could translate from the Persian and then copying a sensationalist headline from each other.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[MrSteveSD]

There was a little revolution between then and now: the CIA-created Shah regime signed that treaty. And, of course, parties are free to leave the NNPT whenever they like: that's how treaties work.

We also must not forget the CIA-trained SAVAK secret police who kept the dictator in power. They tortured and murdered thousands of dissidents. Of course, back when Iran signed the treaty, the US was only to happy to help Iran with its nuclear program, despite the fact it was not a democracy.

Then again, that's supposed to be part of the whole NNPT system, i.e. you agree not to develop weapons and the existing nuclear powers help you with your civilian nuclear power projects. The way things have gone though is that the NNPT is simply used as a weapon against any states that are not a US ally. The actions of western countries have weakened the NNPT and further strengthened the view that it is just a tool to maintain a system of nuclear apartheid.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

And in case you forgot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said "Israel should be wiped off the map", well he IS the PRESIDENT of Iran.

Read documented history and not propaganda.

Read documented history and not propaganda.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21188

Re:Not so bad of a result

[turbidostato]

"If Iran is so damned intent on obtaining nuclear capability (for military or civilian purposes) and not wanting to catch flak for it, just withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Otherwise its just a blatant violation of the treaty."

Given that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is about weapons, not civil nuclear uses, no: wanting to obtain civil nuclear capability is not any kind of violation of the treaty.

In fact, the very NNPT recognizes "the inalienable right of sovereign states to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes" so there you go, Mr. Anonymous Coward.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

"Israel should be wiped off the map" -- wasn't that a mistranslation?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

"How often have surrounding Arab states invaded Israel?"

Hummm... once? (and please note that the very existance of Israel if due to lands being taken off surrounding sovereign countries).

"How often has Israel invaded surrounding Arab states?"

Hummm... at least three times?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[andy1307]

For the same reason it's ok for cops to have guns but it's no ok for criminals to have guns. Which country is more likely to use nuclear weapons against the US or US interests?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really a 'standard' then, is it.

I hate the hypocrisy that suggests that rules should only apply to those who you dislike. Its all very well to say 'Iran shouldn't have nukes'. They shouldn't try to hid it as some sort of international fairness thing tho.

IMHO, Iran should just pull out of the NNPT anyway, or at least until Israel is a part of it.

Perhaps if America wasn't so hypocritical, and unswerving in its support for Israel, and didn't support dictatorships that oppress (or oppressed in the Shah's case) the people (not that Iran's people are any better off at all now), then people in the middle east just might not hate your country.

Oh wait, its your 'freedoms' (which don't actually exist anyway) they hate, right?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[adtifyj]

It is more like the difference between "I intend to kill you" and "Please kill yourself".

The difference is important given that this quote is being used to justify treating Iran as a sovereign nation run by a president capable of starting a nuclear war which would almost certainly result in its own annihilation.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Arty2]

Confusing defensive with counter-offensive are we?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[NikolaiKutuzov]

How the fuck is that posting informative? It is plainly FUD

Ahmadinejad has said again and again that he intends to destroy Israel

Go check yourselves

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dropadrop]

Yup, and as far as I'm aware they have not really broken the treaty? Most of the discussion seems to revolve around them having nuclear facilities that are allowed by the treaty - but people being worried they might be able to take that further. I get a feeling they are being pushed to limit their production even further then the treaty would actually require them to.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, personally I would prefer that they don't have nuclear weapons. This whole case smells of politics more then anything else though, and personally I find Israel not signing the treaty and already having nuclear weapons to be a big problem too (once again politics is what is causing them not to be pressured about it as much).

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is a very good reason for all people in the region to be enemies of Israel. The ethnic cleansing of the native Arabs of Palestine by European Zionists is the main reason there is a conflict. And anybody including Iran who is aware of the plight of the native Arabs will not be a friend of Israel.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[hairyfeet]

Which is why I can understand Iran wanting nukes. Say what you will, but MAD works. MAD is effective. does anybody think Western Europe would have lasted through the 50s without MAD? while I know there are plenty that would like it if nukes just went bye bye, the simple fact of the matter is knowing you are gonna have YOUR country glowing in the dark for the next 5000 years is a pretty damned good deterrent for those around you. Is there anyone here who think we would have invaded Iraq if they had nukes ready to fly?

And while I think President Ahmijerk has a big mouth and likes to play to the crowd's anti-Israel sentiment, I don't think even he is stupid enough to launch a bird at Israel knowing the death will be raining down on his country minutes later. If there is ANYONE we need to be worried about it is "dear leader" in NK, who frankly with all his gold statues of himself and cult of personality is probably more than a little batshit. But MAD works, and is the reason the USA and USSR didn't go toe to toe for nearly a half a century.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Jews wanted the land and they are taking it piece by piece. They have already destroyed hundreds of Arab towns and villages and expelled hundreds of thousands of people out of their ancestral homes and imported millions of Jews from around the world to take their place. this is clear ethnic cleansing and people in the region are very aware of what the Jews did because they can see the plight of the refugees first hand without relying of biased news media.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a deliberate remotely controlled meltdown will have far less collateral damage then an attempt at destroying the facility from the air using 'bunker-buster' type weapons, and will most likely ensure to a greater degree that the facility isn't rebuilt right away.

Given the current off-the-chart insanity among leaders of Iran, only these two options will provide a reasonable insurance against a nuclear-equipped Iran running amok in the middle east, destroying everything they don't like right and left.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dhaines]

Blindness and apathy were very popular traits of the day.

Were?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a double standard, it's a self-centered standard. I am opposed to countries like Iran, who have special holidays for hating my country, getting nuclear weapons. I don't want people who have declared themselves enemies of my country to have nuclear weapons. Unfair? Yes. Do I care, not really. Sometimes there are more important things than fairness (and real fairness in life is impossible anyway).

Well maybe if we stopped screwing with them and their country they wouldn't have holidays hating our country. Then again you did hit the nail on the head. A self-centered standard set up my self-centered assholes like yourself.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[dave420]

Ha! Nice response, dickhole.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Anonymous Coward]

When's the last time an Israeli head of state threatened to wipe another country or religion completely off the earth?

Re:Not so bad of a result

[jd]

Yes. These days, they're industry-standard.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

Yours, this one to be precise.
1941 - Brittan & USSR invade.
1942 - US sends in military force to operate and maintain the railroad.

Nothing about the US until after the Shah was removed.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

Then why do they follow the USSR treaties and act as if they do? Treaties such as START I

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

Yes, they have broken the treaty. One of the requirements is to not develop secret facilities. Iran was doing this for years before they were discovered and announced.

The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA.

source

Re:Not so bad of a result

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Nothing about the US until after the Shah was removed.

But everything about the US being there before the Shah (his son) was installed. You know the one we originally talked about.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

I'm missing something. I brought up how the Shah's father was deposed in 1941. Then you came along and said

Interesting how that article mostly ignores the influence of the USA in the events, unlike this one.

referencing WW2. The Shah (his son) was installed in 1941. I'm not seeing where the US was there before 1942.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I'm missing something. I brought up how the Shah's father was deposed in 1941.

So you admit a non sequitur. Nobody was talking about his dad.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[theshowmecanuck]

And like I said in another comment, what he really said amounted to the exact same thing. He said the regime (Israel)occupying Jerusalem must be vanished from the face of time. Please, tell me how that differs from wiped from the face of the map. They both mean 'annihilate Israel'. He wants the destruction of Israel. Stop being so pedantic. If someone were to say another person should be 'rubbed out' or 'wacked' or 'capped', would you argue if someone else were to interpret that as 'they should be killed'? They mean the same thing.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Gumbercules!!]

I suppose the issue is that Israel may have had Nukes since the 60's or 70's or there abouts. And they've had many wars in that time and in fact, in 73, Israel was almost wiped out by a massive surprise invasion from all their neighbours. And they *still* didn't use those nukes (if they have them).

This shows they know how to be responsible with them.

Iran, on the other hand, has made many comments to indicate they do not know how to be responsible with nukes and would almost certainly hand them directly to Hizbollah for immediate use.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Ironsides]

Read over the thread again, from the start. I was talking about his dad when you came in. I said:

Interesting you don't mention how that government(1) came to be in the first place.
(1) being the government that was replaced by the Shah's son.

So, we had in chronological order:
1) Government of Shah's father
2) UK & Russia remove Shah's father, impose new government.
3) US becomes involved
4) US returns Shahs to power

I was pointing out, before you came in, how no one ever talks about 1 & 2 in that list. You came in when I was bringing up 2.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Read over the thread again, from the start. I was talking about his dad when you came in. I said: Interesting you don't mention how that government(1) came to be in the first place. (1) being the government that was replaced by the Shah's son.

Errm, whatever. I guess at least you have yourself convinced by your little shellgame.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[Dan667]

I believe nobody gives a crap what treaty you signed when you blow them up with a nuke. it is a paper thin excuse to saber rattle and risk using a weapon of mass destruction. israel needs to give up their nukes.

Re:Not so bad of a result

[poopdeville]

Because what they gain from the treaties beats what they could gain from renegotiating them...

Email titled "Death To America!"

[erroneus]

Yeah, that'll teach'm to open up emails and PDFs titled "Death To America!" while running an OS and applications software written and controlled by a U.S. company.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

... on Intel processors designed in Israel.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

i lol'd

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that'll teach'm to open up emails and PDFs titled "Death To America!" while running an OS and applications software written and controlled by a U.S. company.

Siemens, American company?

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[lennier1]

Just for the record:
Siemens = German

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Grishnakh]

Yep, this is the part that's so funny to me. Iran is so anti-America, Ahmadinejad is spouting conspiracy theories at the UN saying the US orchestrated 9/11, but then they're trusting Microsoft Windows (an American product known for security problems) to run their industrial computers? How stupid can you get?

The Chinese are the complete opposite of these buffoons. They know that relying on another country's secret, proprietary software is foolhardy, so they've adopted Linux for governmental uses and have even developed their own Linux distro, Red Flag. Maybe it can't run all the latest applications or whatever, but trusting a product made by your enemy to run your country's infrastructure is just dumb.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, this is the part that's so funny to me. Iran is so anti-America, Ahmadinejad is spouting conspiracy theories at the UN saying the US orchestrated 9/11, but then they're trusting Microsoft Windows (an American product known for security problems) to run their industrial computers? How stupid can you get?

Well, look at the alternative. Using Linux would be ideologically worse.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[ColdWetDog]

Actually Siemens is a pretty globally dispersed corporation, although you are correct in that it's based out of Germany. So they're dancing to many drummers.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would using Linux be worse? IIRC, it was people from IUST who engineered a good part of the SMP part of the Linux kernel in the mid to late 90s.

Microsoft seems to be trying to distance themselves from being American only, which is probably why they handed the source code of Windows to the Russian Federation, and the Chinese PLA.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[SuricouRaven]

German, American... regardless, I imagine the chips are made in China.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[SuricouRaven]

If there ever were open war - and I mean real open war, not just border skirmishes - then the US government could just ask Microsoft for a little help. It would be trivial for them to direct all Windows Update requests from Iranian IP ranges to a 'poison pill' patch that caused the computers to lock up and start flooding their LAN segments with broadcast ping requests.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Grishnakh]

It would also be trivial for Iranians to turn off Windows Updates and block it at the routers. Of course, they might not be smart enough to do that in time. They're obviously not smart enough to build their own nuclear reactor without having to get help from the Germans. To my knowledge, even the Chinese and North Koreans are smart enough to develop their own nuclear technology without having to buy it from someone else. Of course, since the Muslim world hasn't done anything technological of note at all in the last 500 years, this probably shouldn't be a surprise. Unlike more secular societies, where people concentrate on doing useful things (like building things, developing new technologies, creating businesses, etc.) with their time, highly religious societies (and especially Islamic ones) don't accomplish anything at all because people are too busy worrying about what some alleged deity wants or doesn't want to do anything productive.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

What a great name for a Linux Distro - Red Flag, I wonder if they have Mao's little red book as the Help

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, China has had access to Windows Source since 2003.

http://news.cnet.com/China-to-view-Windows-code/2100-1007_3-990526.html

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Grishnakh]

How do they know that the compiled, binary-only Windows that Microsoft has shipped them is the same as the source code they've been supplied? There's no way to verify that, unless they compile and use their own version of Windows from the source.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[LoRdTAW]

That means nothing. SCADA software mostly runs on Windows nowadays. The PLC's/PAC's/RTU's might be made in Germany by Semins but the software that ties them together is most likely Windows.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Jeremi]

trusting a product made by your enemy to run your country's infrastructure is just dumb.

Probably, but if your goal is to have a nuclear arsenal within, say, 5 years, and it would take 10 years to design your own industrial control solutions from scratch, then you may just have to buy the available turnkey solution and take the risk. The alternative would be to push back the "release" another 5 years, and perhaps that wasn't considered acceptable.

What would be the dumb part in this scenario would be allowing people to take USB thumb drives into the "secure" nuclear facility.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

You think those damn Siemens packages have any linux version?

  The open source community instead of focusing on industrial packages is busy with desktop themes!!

    The result? Not evern good Spice,CAD, .... packages for linux.

Re:Email titled "Death To America!"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason Iran is moving forward... and independently operating and developing weapons programs. Sometimes cuting corners to get there. I'm not suggesting using Microsoft Windows is a wise move. But it may be a corner cut. Nobody develops based on nothing today. We all rely on third party countries including the USA. Including our enemies. It may be stolen, it may be pirated. It probably will bite them in the ass. Iran should be moving toward free software no doubt if they the added advantage.

Leaps of logic

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hard time taking it seriously that a "Nation State" is the most likely source of the infection and I have an even harder time that it is the Untited States behind it. Siemens is a huge (German) manufaturer of control systems, their equipment is installed throughout the industrialized world. The Bushehr reactor is being built with help from Russia but I am sure there are engineers from many different countries involved (notably absent would be Israel and the U.S.). These engineers should include people responsible for the security of both the Windows and the Siemens systems.

I would argue that these engineers are the likely source of the information used to create the 'worm'. They have to be. Nobody else should have the information available to them to program the specific scenero to meet all of the inputs required to cause the mayhem the worm is intended to cause.

Perhaps over a couple of beers they decided they didn't like some of the things they were seeing? Maybe they wrote the worm or maybe they just provided the information to the people that did. But either way, it reeks of being an inside job.

Re:Leaps of logic

[IamTheRealMike]

The skills "reprogram industrial PLCs" and "find four new zero days in Windows" don't overlap a whole lot. Given what this virus does, it's very hard to believe it's the work of one or two guys. The whole thing smells strongly of a highly skilled and well financed team assembled for a specific reason. After all, it apparently is searching for a specific device or type of device and then tries to sabotage it - presumably this code was thoroughly tested, which means whoever wrote it is likely to have a small recreation of parts of the target factory somewhere. Not cheap or easy to set up.

Re:Leaps of logic

[gad_zuki!]

Bored engineers came up with 4 zero-day exploits and two stolen keys to sign Realtek and Jmicron drivers? Whoever did this had some serious black-hat resources at his disposal. Most likely a nation state as an individual or group would be able to sell these exploits for a tidy sum.

Its also important to realize that revealing these exploits and compromised keys to the public is a huge opportunity cost. Someone decided that attacking Iran was worth it. That seems like a decision a government would make.

Re:Leaps of logic

[melikamp]

IMHO, it could easily be industrial sabotage by a competitor of Siemens. Iran just got in the way. The linked articles indicate that the worm does not seem to be harmful at the moment, so, really, Siemens is worse off than Iran right now.

Re:Leaps of logic

[EdIII]

You've completely ignored idealism here. The U.S and Israel are not the only governments with an interest to destabilize the Iranian government. I can see Russia, China, and Jordan having an interest as governments to destabilize Iran, especially, when the U.S and Israel are such convenient scapegoats. Perhaps, even just causing the U.S and Israel some problems would be the end goal of the whole project.

Keep in mind that opportunity costs only matter to criminal organizations... and governments. Criminal organizations would be concerned with lost profit, while governments are concerned with losing an attack vector.

What about the idealism? Out of all of the engineers that have worked on that equipment in Iran, NONE of them had any idealism or conflicts with the Iranian government?

Burning a huge opportunity cost to sabotage a nuclear reactor in Iran certainly sounds like something an idealistic group of "terrorists" would do to stop the Iranian government from becoming a nuclear power.

Note I keep saying Iranian government. There are millions of young people in Iran right now, some of them fairly well educated, sophisticated, and access to funding, that don't consider themselves on board with the current Iranian leaders.

We can speculate all day who really might have done this, but we can't rule out home grown terrorism here either.

Re:Leaps of logic

[seanadams.com]

The skills "reprogram industrial PLCs" and "find four new zero days in Windows" don't overlap a whole lot.

That's like saying, the skills "sweating copper pipe" and "hydraulic engineering" don't overlap a lot. It's true, but if you can do the latter, you're probably smart enough to figure out the former. And please, don't tell me how hard SCADA is... I've done it (as well as much harder things eg kernel work, VHDL, and analog circuit design), and it's all gluing together simple logic blocks and control busses. The equipment may be specialized, but that only makes it an obscure skill set, not an advanced one.

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion though. The aspect of actually making this an _effective_ attack would call for some specific knowledge of how the plant operates. That is of far more interest to me than the technical skills needed to code it. I'm not convinced that this really was an _effective_ hack, in terms of intelligence gained, operations halted for a long time, etc - but who knows the exact objective.

Re:Leaps of logic

[Angst Badger]

The most telling detail for me is that everyone involved or potentially involved is issuing denials at multiple levels.

My guess -- and it's only a guess -- is that the Germans created it, hoping to throw a spanner into the works at the Iranian reactor because someone in their intelligence community got wind of Russian (and not only Russian-made) SAMs being moved into position to protect their investment, and while no one could predict the exact outcome of an unexpected direct US-Russian clash, the Germans were pretty certain it wouldn't do them any good. (The reason for this guess -- and I emphasize guess -- is the recent change in message from one of the Russian number stations, recently noted here on Slashdot.)

Re:Leaps of logic

[russotto]

The skills "reprogram industrial PLCs" and "find four new zero days in Windows" don't overlap a whole lot. Given what this virus does, it's very hard to believe it's the work of one or two guys.

If it weren't for the stolen private keys, two guys would not be unlikely (one Windows, one industrial control) and one guy would be possible, IMO. But given the stolen private keys, some sort of larger espionage operation seems likely. Even if an unethical individual managed to get those private keys, they'd be pretty high value... what individual would have the motive to use not one but both just to attack some industrial control system?

Re:Leaps of logic

[moortak]

We also can't rule out regional players other than Israel. The UAE has deep pockets a no desire for a nuclear Iran, same deal for Saudi Arabia.

Re:Leaps of logic

[Anonymous Coward]

But either way, it reeks of being an inside job

The thing which really got me here was, why would Russia help Iran to install a nuclear facility? Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together is going to realize that this isn't a politically savvy thing to do. And it seems very unlikely that Russia would do it just for the measly 800 million which it earned the country.

I'm kind of curious as to whether the point was to provision a plant for Iran with the goal of ensuring that Iran didn't source it's own plant? My strong suspicion here is that there are several back doors, and probably a library of worms set to shut down the plant whenever it's not being used for it's announced purpose. It seems highly unlikely that Engineers with very public relationships to the Iranian operations would risk their lives doing something like this without having an out.

Re:Leaps of logic

[adtifyj]

If it was industrial sabotage, they would have intentionally used old published news stories to make it appear that one nation targeting another nation. Nothing influences government purchasing policies like national security.

As always, (anti-virus) protection companies have the most to gain from unprecedented attacks, so they get my vote. This attack gave them a whole new market begging for servitude. And the potentially infected installations are unlikely to publicly say that their billion dollar hardware was screwed up, if they can at all avoid it, and the payload sounds like it gives them a nice option: wear and tear.

If the source of the worm is a group or individual, they are either dead or set for life.

Re:Leaps of logic

[melikamp]

Yeah, it's easy to forget about AV vendors after switching to GNU/Linux. It's pretty funny how AV guys are turning into these sleazy protection racket outfits. People ask me sometimes for an advice on virus protection on Windoze, and I just cannot bring myself to endorse anything. Get rid of Explorer, Outlook, Office, anything by Adobe; prompt updates, regular backups, and then just pray. Or get Ubuntu.

Re:Leaps of logic

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the irony is Iran's choice of primary contractor. I wouldn't find it very surprising if the majority of people involved in the Russian nuclear field have a Jewish heritage or religious background in some form or another. Thus Iran's biggest contractor in the project being infiltrated by Mossad isn't really too much of a stretch. There's likely a lot more wrong with their nuclear development project than viruses in their operating software.

Quoth the CIA

[CarpetShark]

although the US official claims they do not know the origin of the virus

"Hey, we just want them fucked up. We don't give a shit about the details."

Re:Quoth the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

"I accidentally dropped multiple USB thumb drives near the plant managers car. What happened next was beyond my control".

Must be reading that line wrong

[devphaeton]

"Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group, causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States "

How does "too complex for an individual or group" equate to "must be Israel or the United States"? I hope I'm reading this wrong.

Otherwise I might have to troll about "German companies blaming the US and the Jews for everything" or something.

Re:Must be reading that line wrong

[mr100percent]

People hack Windows for Fun or Profit. Script kiddies don't hack to cause Sabotage, and they don't hack expensive industrial control systems. I'm pretty sure whoever was this sophisticated didn't just get an equipment manual and write a virus for an embedded processor, they most likely got their hands on one to dissect and test a virus on, which some hacker kiddie can't do. It seems very likely someone bankrolled this with lots of money and resources. China is out since they are supporting Iran, and Russia is profiting from Iran as well. With the usual suspects out, it's time to look at Iran's enemies for this.

Re:Must be reading that line wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

i had a shave this morning with occam's razor. and it told me the fucking jews did it.

Re:Must be reading that line wrong

[ColdWetDog]

China is out since they are supporting Iran, and Russia is profiting from Iran as well. With the usual suspects out, it's time to look at Iran's enemies for this.

Don't rule out either China or Russia. Yes, they 'support' Iran in some limited sense but they both have their own (differing) views of how things should play out. Neither might be terribly interested in a nuclear armed Iran. Of course, the Russians would be playing a very fine line both building and destroying the plant - however, there may well be many forces at work in both countries that are at odds with other groups inside their own country.

It's not like the US isn't both simultaneously supporting and seeking to destabilize the same regime in Afghanistan (Karzi's fruit loop of a family).

Re:Must be reading that line wrong

[Jeremi]

"Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group, causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States "

It's all speculation, of course. But ask yourself, who has both the capability AND the motivation to carry out such an attack? The same countries who have been threatening an aerial strike (but haven't gone through with it because a physical attack would be too destabilizing) certainly come to mind as likely suspects.

Re:Must be reading that line wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reasoning is "individuals or groups can't have done it, so it must've been nation states. The only ones with an obvious interest in doing so are the USA and Israel". I don't necessarily agree with either the premise OR the conclusion, though.

On a side note, "Israelis" != "Jews". Quite a few people living in Israel aren't Jews, and quite a few Jews aren't living in Israel. (And FWIW, "Israelis" != "Israel", either.)

Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[IamTheRealMike]

from here

I’m surprised at how often project names for secret projects have some relation on the project. This is really for you conspiracy theorists, but read the Book of Esther in the bible where Esther informs the King of a plot against the Jews. The King then allows the Jews to defend themselves, kill their enemies, Esther’s was born as Hadassah which means Myrtle. According to Symantec, “While we don’t know who the attackers are yet, they did leave a clue. The project string b:\myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb appears in one of their drivers.” Myrtus is Myrtle. Yes this is a stretch, and of course even if this naming meant something it could be a feint to draw suspicion away from the actual attacker.

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[Kozz]

from here

I’m surprised at how often project names for secret projects have some relation on the project. This is really for you conspiracy theorists, but read the Book of Esther in the bible where Esther informs the King of a plot against the Jews. The King then allows the Jews to defend themselves, kill their enemies, Esther’s was born as Hadassah which means Myrtle. According to Symantec, “While we don’t know who the attackers are yet, they did leave a clue. The project string b:\myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb appears in one of their drivers.” Myrtus is Myrtle. Yes this is a stretch, and of course even if this naming meant something it could be a feint to draw suspicion away from the actual attacker.

Or, from the Guava wikipedia page, the fruit is part of the Myrtle family. Furthermore, From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrtus#Uses_in_myth_and_ritual,

In Jewish liturgy, it is one of the four sacred plants of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles representing the different types of personality making up the community - the myrtle having fragrance but not pleasant taste, represents those who have good deeds to their credit despite not having knowledge from Torah study. Three branches are held by the worshippers along with a citron, a palm leaf, and two willow branches. In Jewish mysticism, the myrtle represents the phallic, masculine force at work in the universe.

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[Thing 1]

Interesting. "b:" is generally a floppy drive as well (although can be remapped, if one is running low on drive letters).

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[taxman_10m]

Do new computers sold in Israel still generally come with a floppy drive? Here in the USA it's been a while since I saw a newish computer that still had a floppy drive.

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use it for network shares. That's far more likely to be the case here.

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO that would implicate American-born "non denominational" evangelical Christians as much as Israelis. They want war in the mid east, and they read the bible.

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[PHPfanboy]

Nope.

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[Ecuador]

Bingo! It must be one of those 7 computers that still have a floppy drive! Now we'll just wait for the next time they connect to a bbs server to pinpoint their location and go investigate them!

Re:Interesting (highly speculative) link to Israel

[Anonymous Coward]

Lest some readers get the wrong idea, the Guava (Psidium) has no role in jewish liturgy, unlike the Myrtus. So while the name myrtus might be a (faint) hint, I don't think you can read much into the name Guava, except, perhaps, that the developers chose a naming scheme based on the Myrtus botanical family.

If groups of hackers in Iran and China

[compucomp2]

are government sponsored "cyber armies," and constitute some sort of nefarious plot to bring down the United States (or Israel), then what is this?

But hey, these guys are on your team, so it's cool and it's all good, when the guys on the other team are evil demons who threaten your existence.

Re:If groups of hackers in Iran and China

[Anonymous Coward]

"then what is this?"

Iran being stupid and buying the bulk of their equipment from a short list of companies corrupt and unethical enough to sell their wares to that country. Then that equipment gets targetted because of their asinine behavior.

Certainly not what you want others to believe. There is no clear evidence, unlike attacks from North Korea and China.

Obviously, lack of information allows absolute speculation to run rampant for some people. It shows your fears, loathing, and hate.

It's not as if systems in the US and elsewhere are immune. Iran simply has limited choice in their equipment supply, so they are getting hammered more by a virus written for and targetting those systems. Other similar systems are being hit elsewhere. Iran just is getting a bulk of it because they don't use much else. The computer equivalent of a monocrop..

Re:If groups of hackers in Iran and China

[compucomp2]

"Corrupt and unethical"? "Asinine behavior"? Do I really need to recite the skeletons the Americans have accumulated in their closet over the last 60 years?

"No clear evidence?" You mean, random American security researchers proclaiming almost blindly that the attacks originated from the government? How is that more credible than Iranian security researchers proclaiming that this is a Zionist/American plot?

Your post, and the fact that it is modded insightful, shows American/Western hypocrisy at its core. It's like two sports teams going at each other. Your team is always right, moral, and justified, and the other team is always wrong and nefarious. However it seems like Americans will never realize this and will always be hypocritical and sanctimonious.

"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[G3ckoG33k]

"new nuclear reactor in Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

While Bush Sr had it, Bush Jr was the worst president for a century.

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[Cyberax]

I think it's a stretch to make an assertion that Bush has traveled 1500 years back in time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushehr

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[techno-vampire]

Bush Jr was the worst president for a century.

I'm no fan of his, but I wouldn't go quite that far. Personally, I'd say that both Harding and Carter were far worse.

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[F34nor]

My Dad went to Andover with him and listened to the "stick ball" speech, later he majored in history at Harvard, got a law degree from Columbia and a JD so I think he is entitled to his opinion both personal and historical on Bush. He says "Bush was the worst president since Harding" and "...did 100 years of damage to the US economy."

My opinion is that Bush was a kakistocracy (government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens) created by the dominists to defame the federal government an encourage ass-clowns the tea bag express. I think Bush was not only the worst president in living memory but more importantly he was a "domestic enemy" of the constitution who signed a law that directly attacked the 4th amendment. Harding merely allowed the secessionist southern senators to allocate money to the south after secession, a crime of inaction rather than a premeditated attack of the Constitution.

Carter, are you kidding? Not great, or even good but he didn't cause the energy crisis, he didn't cause the helicopters to flip on the way to Tehran, he sure as hell didn't negotiate, then delay the release of the hostages in an arms deal with our enemies like the Reaganites. He didn't buy into the John and Allan Dulles model of political change through CIA sponsored overthrows of democratically elected governments in Iran. Did you know that buying "Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up" by the Iran Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh used to get you on the federal watch list? I wonder why?

I am pretty sure you are repeating other people opinions without critical thought with a flippant nod to conservatives so I'll forgive you, but only barely.

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[techno-vampire]

I am pretty sure you are repeating other people opinions without critical thought with a flippant nod to conservatives so I'll forgive you, but only barely.

As a matter of fact, I was in my mid-20s when Carter was elected. Personally, I found him an embarrassment because he was such a wishy-washy wimp. About the only good thing I, or most of my friends have to say about him is that he made sure that Harding didn't go down in history as the worst President of the 20th Century. If you're a Democrat, you have him to blame for the three consecutive Republican terms that followed, so I'd be a tad cautious about praising him, if I were you.

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[techno-vampire]

Harding merely allowed the secessionist southern senators to allocate money to the south after secession, a crime of inaction rather than a premeditated attack of the Constitution.

Sorry for replying twice, but this just caught my eye. You do realize, don't you, that Warren Gamaliel Harding was president from 1921 through 1923 and wasn't even born until slightly after the Civil War?

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[F34nor]

Sorry I meant James Buchanan

Re:"Bushehr" named in reference to the Bush era?

[techno-vampire]

I rather thought you did. Of course, he was a 19th Century President, and outside of our discussion. As I wrote earlier, I remember the Carter Years directly and as an adult, and I think he was a piss-poor President, much worse than Bush Jr. Not that I think either Bush was that great, mind you, but having lived through all of their administrations I'd have to say that Carter was the worst of the three.

Obligatory Beavis and Butthead

[Anonymous Coward]

"Siemens"
"Bushehr"
Hehehehehahahehehehe

And if this were the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flip the target.

What would we be seeing in the headlines? "Cyber Terrorists attempt to take down US power grid with VIRUS."

Of course that would never happen here. We don't connect our power grid to the same networks that regular Internet traffic travels. We never have security breaches or virus infections at classified facilities. I'm so glad the US is 100% safe from this type of scenario now, and will be forever.

/gingerly rolls eyes....

Re:And if this were the US?

[dloose]

ugh, I hate gingers

Servers you right

[devent]

From Slashdot: The attackers behind the recent Stuxnet worm attack used four different zero-day security vulnerabilities to burrow into — and spread around — Microsoft's Windows operating system, according to a startling disclosure from Microsoft. Two of the four vulnerabilities are still unpatched.

Servers you right using Windows for anything critical. Are they waiting one month for a fix as the rest of the Windows users?

and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[CAIMLAS]

So assume the US or Israel were at direct fault for this, ignoring the fallacy of "no single group" for a moment.

Why is that a problem, exactly?

We've got many, many quotes from the Iranian leaders (many of them) which are along the lines of:

* death to Israel
* we will hit Israel with a nuke
* we wish to see Israel as bright as the sun
* we can hit Europe with our ballistic missiles!
* America is our Enemy

This, all in light of their nuclear program having no explicable goal at this point aside from nuclear weaponry. A year or two ago, you could excuse it as being for 'peaceful means' but not any longer.

If someone says "I'm going to come over and beat the shit out of you sometime this week while you sleep" you act proactively, one way or another.

I would much rather the approach of calling the police and getting them put on house arrest than the approach of boarding up the guy's house and burning it down.

If people do conclude this was a US/Israel attack, they should take it as an indication to everyone watching that the US and Israel are not bloodthirsty. This is about as non-aggressive as you can get in terms of a physical attack, and the thought and planning involved is significantly more than simply launching an airstrike or missiles.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've got many, many quotes from the Iranian leaders (many of them) which are along the lines of:

Citation please, along with the actual non-paraphrased quotes.

If people do conclude this was a US/Israel attack, they should take it as an indication to everyone watching that the US and Israel are not bloodthirsty.

Right. That works so long as you are willing to ignore all the examples of war crimes and atrocities committed by both of them.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[joe_frisch]

The problem is that as far as I know, international law doesn't know how to deal with national cyber-attacks. Are they the equivalent of a physical attack? If they do large scale financial damage (loss of services)? If they do large scale physical damage (destroy a factory of power plant), if they kill a few people (factory accident), kill a lot of people (chemical plant explodes)?

If a cyber-attack on financial institutions costs billions of dollars is that an act of war?

If a cyber-attack from country A caused a Bophal like disaster in country B, is country B justified in launching a physical attack on population centers of country A?

Words are one thing - attacks (physical or cyber) that cause damager are another.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a tendency. Certain countries committing atrocities end up labeled bloodthirsty, fanatic, aggressor, evil. Another specific set of countries committing atrocities end up being excused like: "they did it for the greater good", "justified self-defense", "reducing further damage", "preventing world war III", "protecting democracy".

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[mr100percent]

No you don't. Show me a quote from an Iranian leader currently in power who said "We will hit Israel with a nuke." US Republicans and Israeli Likudniks have said to nuke Iran, but do you have a statement showing the reverse?

Iranians do see Israel and the US as enemies, since the US overthrew the democractic government of Iran in the 1950s, and tried to do it again after 1979. The amount of warmongering from Bush and Rumsfeld in both statements and actions (bombing Iranian embassy in an airstrike) only put them further on edge.

Your claim that their nuclear program can ONLY be for weapons and not energy is a silly claim, and you make it without proof. The IAEA and academics disagree with you.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[SuricouRaven]

Give me a second on google. I'm going to limit this search only to state agencies or individuals who hold a significent position within a state government.

Ahmadinejad said in a 2005 speech that Israel should be destroyed. The most common translation is "wiped off the map." The exact wording is somewhat debateable in english, but definatly a call for destruction.

"Jewish tourists infected with AIDS are traveling around Asian and African countries with the aim of spreading the disease." Husniya Hassan Moussa, lecturer at the National Research Center, Egypt. Noteworthy because he still has his job after saying that.

"[Israel is] starting a new genocide against the Palestinian people by poisoning them, using poisoned candy bags dropped from airplanes. " - WAFA, Palestinian state news agency.

"The day will come and we shall rule America The day will come and we shall rule Britain, we shall rule the entire world, except the Jews. The Jews will not live under our rule agreeably permanently, since they have been treacherous in nature throughout history. A day will come when all shall rest from the Jews, even the tree and the stone, which have suffered from them. Listen to your Beloved [Muhammad], who tells you about the most dire end of the Jews. The tree and the stone want the Muslim to bring every Jew to his end. You all know the Hadith." Palestinian Authority TV, Friday Sermon.

"The Jews seek to conquer the world...We must expose the Zionist-Colonialist plot and its goals, which destroy not only our people but the entire world."Abdel Jawad Saleh, PA Minister of Agriculture, Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah on Nov. 6, 1997

"Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living in the West Bank and in Jerusalem....You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State....I have no use for Jews; they are and remain Jews." Yasser Arafat, then head of the PLO and PA President

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[shutdown -p now]

Citation please, along with the actual non-paraphrased quotes.

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FckLO8HcNyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk_eXtCu03E

Oh, and here are a few more which, while they don't quite come from leaders, do come from agents of the Iranian state - in their official capacity - cheering the crowd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHoVuFlrcjA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92myDzAFgU4

Search for "death to Israel" and "death to America" on YouTube for tons more of that.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, how about some Iranian quotes?

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[CAIMLAS]

Current societal mores are fucked up. If someone with power does something oppressive/offensive/etc. it's considered a war crime, a crime against humanity, etc.

If someone (or a group of someones) does something

This is used to excuse and even laud the most odious of crimes against others. See: people justifying the 9/11 attackers or suicide bombers.

Many, many more people have been killed, maimed, etc. by 'underdogs' than by the actions of those in power (the US, et al), yet it's ignored for politically and morally suspect reasons.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[jsepeta]

In fact, the Iranians chose the type of nuclear reactor that would produce nuclear fuel usable by both domestic and military plans precisely to hide how much nuclear fuel they're generating. And with all the additional centrifuges they've set up, it's clear that their military aim outweighs their domestic agenda. I think that is proof enough that they desire a weapons program without taking the responsibility that goes with such actions (like being hit by Israel in a pre-emptive strike).

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[miffo.swe]

Israel and the US are the aggressors here. I fully understand Iran wanting nukes to protect themselves from what has happened to Vietnam, South Korea, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan etc.

Who did protect themselves first? Israel and the US already have striked Iran while Iran has been very laid back. Dont forget either that the US paid Iraq fully for going to war with Iran. The US even fucking providided Iraq with biological weapons to use against Iran.

I fully condone Iran getting nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the US and Israel. However, nothing points to Iran making nuclear weapons at this time. It has been fully debunked and written of just as Iraqs "weapons of mass destructions" that proved to be an utter and outright lie just because the US was aking to go to war with anyone just as long as Pentagon could go to war.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many, many more people have been killed, maimed, etc. by 'underdogs' than by the actions of those in power (the US, et al), yet it's ignored for politically and morally suspect reasons

- Really? Any proof of this? Or do you just 'know'?

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[Tweenk]

In fact, the Iranians chose the type of nuclear reactor that would produce nuclear fuel usable by both domestic and military plans precisely to hide how much nuclear fuel they're generating.

This is patently false. Bushehr is a VVER which is a Russian variant of the popular PWR (pressurized water reactor) design. PWRs are useless for plutonium production.

Re:and why would that be a problem, exactly?

[dbIII]

Yet if you sell weapons to those crazy "Death to America" guys (and embezzle a bit on the side) and you can wrap yourself in the flag, call yourself a patriot and run for office.

Oooops ...

[Anonymous Coward]

it has caused irreparable damage to the pumps that used to pump oil onto tankers for export to the US.

it was targeting the enrichment centrifuges

[CreamyG31337]

just read
http://frank.geekheim.de/?p=1189

Re: it was targeting the enrichment centrifuges

[ginbot462]

I second that site, and offer up this one as well:

http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/09/holy-shit.html

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know they had that many computers over there.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The Soviets also never said "we will hit the US with nukes". Instead, they were all about "world peace" and "progress". Read Churchill's Fulton speech to understand how these things work in reality.

> Iranians do see Israel and the US as enemies, since the US overthrew the democractic government of Iran in the 1950s, and tried to do it again after 1979.

You make it sound like a simple matter of political history, like Eastern Europeans not liking Russia because it successfully occupied them, and Finns not liking Russia because it tried to. Neither, however, involves calling Russia "the Great Satan" and the like. Maybe Iran being a militant Islamic theocracy has *something* to do with its enmity towards the US? This placement of the US at the cusp of religious hate far predates Bush and Rumsfield.

As to potential peacefulness of Iran's nuclear program, you simply misunderstand technology. For any advanced military application, there have to be many overtly civilian technological dependencies. Tanks are made in "tractor" factories, which can also build some tractors on the side; peaceful space flight and ICBMs are basically the same rockets; a "peaceful" reactor generating plutonium can generate some energy for the national grid, too. The last step to the actual weapon is quite short and takes a couple of years, once the "peaceful" tech infrastructure is built.

Re:Bullshit

[mikael_j]

The Soviets also never said "we will hit the US with nukes". Instead, they were all about "world peace" and "progress". Read Churchill's Fulton speech to understand how these things work in reality.

And after the fall of the USSR it has been shown that they weren't planning to attack the US any more than the US was planning to attack them, if anything they poured a lot of resources into being able to strike back, they were terrified of the thought that the US would attack them.

But I suspect in the history books available in american schools this isn't really mentioned too much, there seems to still be a lot of fear in the US when it comes to "the red menace", "pinkos", "commies" and other bogeymen...

that's seriously funny shit

[jsepeta]

after all iran's efforts to whitewash the internet and control what folks can access, for them to catch a virus and spread it all around is just PRICELESS. couldn't happen to a more worthy bunch of DICKS.

Looking at the details

[codepunk]

Someone with a high degree of motivation and insider knowledge had to be responsible for such a pointed attack. Someone just wanting to create some havoc could have just built a worm that probes the network for modbus tcp devices and started firing values into the registers.

Treaty is dropped

[Anonymous Coward]

It w3as signed by a puppet of the US, then the puppet thrown out in the 79 iran revolution, and the NNPT went down the drain at the same moment. So really, STFU. Current Iran DID NOT sign the NNPT.

it's called self-fulfilling prophecy

[circletimessquare]

that is, if you believe in terrible things happening, you actually wind up creating the conditions for terrible things to happen, both directly and unconsciously. it does not surprise me at all that the middle east is on the brink of armageddeon style war, because of all the assholes in the middle east who so fervently believe in dusty old books full of armageddeon style war

in other words: fuck judaism, fuck christianity, and fuck islam. the world would be a much better place without the abrahamic religions. it is no coincidence at all that the middle east is a hot bed of suffering due fervent beliefs, it is a direct consequence of what the bullshit the assholes there believe in

i actually do believe it is important to have faith in something and believe in something in this world. but neither judaism, christianity, nor islam are valid things to believe in. i spit on those religions, for the suffering they have brought the world

It's the USraelis...

[EuroBorg]

It's the USraelis trying to hit the Iranian centrifuges... http://www.langner.com/en/index.htm Obvious....

Tech Support

[xannash]

So when they call tech support and inevitably speak to some one in India, Is the technician allowed to use a name that is appropriate to the region or will they still be forced to use a fake American name, such George?