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Stuxnet Worm Claimed To Be Devastating In Iran

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the new-same-world dept.

sciencewatcher writes "At debka.com, a website associated with intelligence communities focusing on the Middle East, the claim is made that Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcise the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers."

3 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So what's the word, people. by Bert64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doesn't really matter either way...

    Iran was grossly negligent in allowing their critical infrastructure to run on software controlled by a hostile government (and which they most likely had to pirate because there are export restrictions against iran).

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  2. Re:Millions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sadly, most industrial control stuff runs on Winderz. It's all DCOM-based and takes so much banging your head against the monitor to get configured and working properly that oftentimes, you end up having disabled most any security features available out of sheer "maybe THIS will work" frustration. When you finally DO get it working, the last thing you want to do is go back and start turning on the security features as it will just break this fragile house of cards.

    At least that's been my experience with it.

    Posting anonymously cuz I just kind of admitted I'm DOING IT WRONG. But I swear it's true.

  3. Re:Spreading havoc? by __aaqvdr516 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IAAICT (I am an Instrumentation and Controls Tech)

    Stuxnet specifically targets Siemens Simatic Wincc software and associated PLC's. Essentially, the Wincc software is the programming base to interact with the PLC's, which are discreet CPU/memory clusters running optimized code for whatever it is you'd like to do. There are many PLC manufacturers and they use their own programming software to upload/download to their cpu's. The fact that this worm only interacts with Siemens software is not surprising as Siemens is one of the major manufacturers of industrial equipment. I have a large number of Siemens devices all around where I work. I do not use Siemens PLC's though, so I am unaffected by this worm.

    This whole thing smells to me like a disgruntled software guy that used to work for Siemens.