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Iran Arrests Alleged Spies Over Stuxnet Worm
kaptink writes "Reports surfacing from Iran claim 'nuclear spies' have been arrested over the infection at the Busheher nuclear station, which opened in August. According to Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, because Stuxnet is so sophisticated, cost so much to write and uses two stolen security certificates, he believes only a national intelligence agency or a huge private company could have devised it, calling them 'enemies' spy services."
They may be right this time, but who will believe them? For those living under a rock, I'm referring to the 3 American hikers who allegedly strayed over the border from Kurdish Iraq, two of which are still being held as spies.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If it were targeted at Iran's nuclear sites by a hostile foreign government, they'd have been a lot more stealthy about it and waited until the thing was in operation to trigger a catastrophic melt-down. I'm sure that the reason it's most prevalent in Iran is due to lax security practices and not some conspiracy against them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Because, the Iranian government acts like a paranoid nut job, and they also control the media within Iran. Their actions and arrests are not about truth, but about posturing and control within their own country. And, also about seeming to be doing something so they can point the finger at the West.
They'll arrest practically anybody and call them a spy if it meets their purposes. Who they have arrested in this case is likely irrelevant -- either they are some random schmucks who are going to be used as scapegoats, or they might be loosely linked to the actual worm. Either way, they won't be above imprisoning, stoning, hanging or what have you.
Either way, they'll pursue them with the same zeal, and they will be a talking point for their president to babble and make veiled threats against everybody. Expect to see him in the UN blathering on incoherently about how they've defeated the enemy or how aliens are about to come out of his asshole and help then achieve their destiny.
I can't decide if his actions are tactical, or if he really is an unstable person who is in control of a military and backed by a bunch of other zealots with an equally skewed perception of the world.
If anybody has a president (and others) who someone should be assassinating, it is Iran. A couple of the Ayatolas are also wack jobs the world would be better off without.
So called security experts - most of them in fact peddlers of software who depend on the fear of malware for their incomes - are not unbiased commentators. Remember how USL claimed that Unix was too complicated for Berkeley grad students to have replicated without copying their proprietary code? And SCO claimed that Linux couldn't possibly be that good without belonging to them? In fact, there's no software "so sophisticated" that it can't be produced by a bunch of sufficiently dedicated geeks.
It's an argument particularly appealing to conspiracy theorists - look at how the authors of "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail" insisted that no-one would expend the effort to forge the documents they relied on, even after the hoax was admitted. You just can't judge this kind of thing on that basis.
Rest assured, you'll never catch those in charge. I doubt there are names on it. Maybe an agency, but they aren't going to be dumb enough to step into Iran. Iran is simply using these arrests as as political tool to further their own goals.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I know it is a rhetorical question, but it has to be said. Given that the United States signed over 29 nation-to-nation treaties with the people of Lakotah, and gravely violated every last one, as well as every single nation-to-nation treaty made with the other captive nations of North America, it seems rather hypocritical to me this very same nation complains about breaches of treaties by others.
The reason the West is so hostile to the possibility of a nuclear Iran is that the only peaceful doctrine nuclear weapons allow, MAD, assumes rational actors on all sides. In Iran that rationality might well be subservient to theology.
Both Pakistan and Israel are western allies with direct US funding for their military. Both have nuclear weapons. Both are filled with religious nutcases. Both have refused to sign the NPT.
Vilifying Iran is a sideshow to the real issue of nuclear proliferation. If the West wants to be taken seriously for nuclear disarmament, it should bring Israel, Pakistan, and India to the table to make the Middle East nuclear free. Iran is doing what any reasonable state would do after seeing what happened to Iraq versus North Korea and Pakistan: If you want to avoid a US invasion, the first step is to get nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
That's the nice thing about not having a justice system.
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
One guy produces some REALLY sophisticated stuff. One of my favorites, though admittedly obscure examples, is Kega. It is a Sega Genesis emulator written by one guy, Steve Snake, in his spare time. It has gone through many iterations, but back when it was KGen was an amazingly good emulator. So good, in fact, that Sega called him and asked if he'd mind coming and writing an emulator for them for their Smash Pack. That's right, rather than having their array of people do it, they hired one guy because he was already good at it. He did that (Sega gave him access to hardware documents and such to help) and then went back on making free emulators for everyone.
Just one guy working in his free time and he's done a better job than anyone else, and a job so good Sega figured it was easier/cheaper/better to just hire him.
Now that doesn't mean this worm was written by one guy, or a couple of guys, or anything like that. It is just intended to demonstrate that there are some extremely talented individuals out there. In fact it turns out that most high quality programs are written by relatively few people. Programming isn't like digging a ditch, doubling the number of people won't double the speed. You'll find situations, like many games, where there was one lead developer, and maybe 5 other developers under them that wrote most of it. There may have been others that helped on specific things (often in the form of a library that was licensed), but it isn't like there were just hundreds of people thrown at the problem. They'd just step on each others toes. Instead you have a few, highly skilled, people who work on a project.
Now as that applies to this worm you might notice that in no way do governments have a monopoly on good programmers. The opposite in fact, the best tend to be in the private industry. You also might note there are good programmers that do some shady things. Cracking would be an excellent example. It is pretty tricky work. You have to debug and work on a program all in assembly, without the source, to strip out the protection code. You sometimes have to emulate the functions of hardware dongles, you have to get around code traps put there to stop a debugger (tying in to the same interrupts and so on). Not straight forward, not low skill, yet done ALL the time.
All this demonstrates is that there are indeed people out there who have the skill necessary to make a complex worm. They don't have to be working for a government.
Who says they didn't do it themselves? I mean since all we've got is weak, conspiracy theory level evidence, let's go for a double secret reverse conspiracy theory: Iran wrote Stuxnet. Their nuclear program was not going as well as they'd hoped. It was faced with setbacks they didn't want to have to acknowledge. Also, they'd really been hoping for an Israeli air strike. That would give them justification on many levels. However everyone was just bitching about it and doing things via diplomatic channels, nobody was attacking. They had nobody but themselves to blame for their problems, and the Jews were not being evil like they should.
So they write Stuxnet. It'll unleash some havoc in general in western countries which is nice and guarantees news time, but gives them a good excuse as to why their shit isn't done on time. However they don't want it to actually damage anything really important. Also they can't very well go telling people "Ummm secure your shit against this," since it has to be clandestine. So they add a "do not infect" code. They can then stick that code on the systems they need to be actually safe. They make it an obtuse Jewish reference to cast possible suspicion is Israel.
They let it lose, havoc happens it is big news. Iran says "Ahhh, this has broken our nuclear shit! Those evil Zionists!" They get to play the victim, they have a good explanation as to why things aren't on schedule, they get to arrest people they don't like, etc.
There you go. Another flimsy conspiracy theory that also fits the very limited available evidence. Hopefully this demonstrates precisely why rushing to assumptions of conspiracies based on minimal evidence is such a bad idea.
Do any planks in the Tea Party platform address any of these in a positive way?