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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?
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?
FTA
Admittedly I didn't know much about Stuxnet until after reading more about it and it seems to me just yet another windows virus that hasn't until now been discovered and mistakenly spread via contractors laptops.
There's a lot of hype over this nuclear reactor however the fact of the matter is that it was only one of many infected areas and the rest of it is simply speculation about what damage could have been done there, what someone planned to spy on, etc. Seems to me that this worm wasn't designed for a specific target and is like any other virus.. well that or this is how Skynet starts becoming self-aware and begins manufacturing terminators..
I mean think about when was the last time the US government could do dick with computers? The US government was broken into by some retard in the UK using default passwords. How can people seriously believe the US government could come out with something like this. With all the media about the aurora virus i'd suspect the Chinese behind something like this way before America.
See the thing is Iran is so efficient on on catching crooks (whether they are actually guilty of the crime the are charged with or not) while the rest of the world seems to lag way behind.
Why?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Iran is a ratified signatory to the Nuclear Non-Profileration Treaty, so: they certainly don't have the right to develop nuclear weapons or even nuclear facilities except with IAEA oversight. Iran's nuclear activity is pretty clearly in contravention of this (they built a nuclear facility in secret near Qom, for example), and there are now several UN sanctions in force against Iran because of this.
Is it 'Western hubris' to demand that a country abide by treaties it ratified? Especially a treaty on a matter as important as nuclear armament...
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.
They arrested "The Usual Suspects".
Admittedly I didn't know much about Stuxnet until after reading more about it and it seems to me just yet another windows virus that hasn't until now been discovered and mistakenly spread via contractors laptops. . . .
Seems to me that this worm wasn't designed for a specific target and is like any other virus..
From what I've read, it was specifically written to infect Siemens controllers, root them so it could change the control algorithms while displaying the proper algorithms when polled. The controllers are located at each piece of equipment, typically running independently, each with a minimal OS, if any. They are connected in a local network to allow communication and central monitoring and adjustment.. Stuxnet only used Windows vulnerabilities as a vector to get onto the front-end workstations in order to load into the controllers through the local network.
That woosh noise you herd mint something.
No brain, no pain.
No, they didn't break the treaty. Iran is only required by the NPT to inform the IAEA 6 months before such a site goes operational. Iran insists that no nuclear enrichment had yet taken place at Qom. Despite being caught red-handed by the US for having the plant, once Iran publicly confirmed its existence they informed the IAEA that they would soon be enriching from there in the future. Like I said, they broke their word, not the treaty.
I wasn't going for moral relativism, I was faulting the people who keep spouting that "Iran is irrational" because of religion. It isn't, and there are other parties more apocalypticly-minded than Iran is.
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.
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.
First, the Iranians were stupid enough to get hit with this, since they apparently didn't have appropriate IT policies in place to prevent malware. Secondly, they apparently didn't have the know-how to figure out what Stuxnet actually did. Finally, several months later, when someone pointed out what it did, they use it as an excuse to arrest some guys that they didn't like.
Triple Fail.
Well our own govt keeps getting hit with quite sophisticated attacks originating in China. The difference appears to be that China is mostly just stealing technology at this point, but if they decide to turn hostile they are probably deep enough into our systems to cause serious infrastructure damage.
What was started by people who just wanted their constitution back, of course has drawn attempts from all over to co-opt it in some way. Duh....don't you know how things work?
Even on NPR...they had an "interview" with a Texas woman who was a real tea party organizer, and cut in with some dude who was one of those religious wing nuts (only a member of the tea party, so he said) who basically, right there on the air threatened that if the tea party didn't go his way (org of family something or other) they'd pull out. She said, fine -- you are welcome here, it's a big tent, but nope, we're not going to push your particular cause for you, why not go try and convince the NRA to push laws against abortion -- you're in the wrong place.
Though NPR is showing signs of seeing blood in the water and not as much a cheerleader of the current majority in government as before, this was their big attempt to discredit the tea party, and it failed pretty badly I think.
When something like that comes from nowhere and threatens the incumbency machine that is the rebuplocrats -- sure, there's going to be a s**t storm of attempts to discredit it, again, doh.
If either the dems or the repubs were "for the people" would there be the mickey mouse copyright law? Would pot still be illegal? Wouldn't someone at least have gone to jail over the economic issues? I'm too lazy to type the other five hundred examples, do some homework.
You might not like the tea party, and for sure it has collected some whack jobs -- big tents do that.
Wouldn't a bunch of crazy incompetents do a better job than the current batch of well connected thieves?
I rest my case.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Do any planks in the Tea Party platform address any of these in a positive way?