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Iran Admits Stuxnet Affected Their Nuclear Program
plover writes "According to this article in the Guardian, 'Ahmadinejad admitted the [Stuxnet] worm had affected Iran's uranium enrichment. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," the president said. "They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that, and today they are not able [to do that] anymore."'"
1. create virus
2. infect own computers and blame other countries for it
3. ??
4. profit
If you honestly think the Yanks pulled this off, you're an Idiot.
People in glass houses should not throw rocks. Israel already took credit for the virus.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
1. No, it's not the first. The 2010 Verizon Data Breach Report shows that 54% of successful attacks using malware used customized or custom-written malware, and that 97% of the data records stolen were done so with the use of custom malware.
2. Yes, we're going to see a lot of it. It's already begun, according the the engineer who dissected the industrial control code that stuxnet injected.
John
Baby did a bad bad thing, baby did a bad bad thing.
Baby did a bad bad thing, baby did a bad bad thing.
You ever want a nuke so much you thought your little centrifuge was gonna break in two?
I didn't think so.
You ever tried with all your heart and soul to get your uranium back to you?
I wanna hope so.
You ever pray with all your heart and soul just to watch it spin away?
Baby did a bad bad thing, baby did a bad bad thing.
Baby did a bad bad thing, feel like crying, feel like crying.
You ever toss and turn your lying awake and thinking about the yellow cake you love?
I don't think so.
You ever close your eyes your making believe your holding the nuke your dreaming of?
Well if you say so.
I hurts so bad when you finally know just how low, low, low, low, low, Israel'll go.
Baby did a bad bad thing, baby did a bad bad thing.
Baby did a bad bad thing, feel like crying, feel like crying.
Ohh. Feel like crying, feel like crying.
Ohh, feel like crying, feel like crying.
Baby did a bad bad thing, baby did a bad bad thing.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
We're crying in the rain we can't push the jews into the sea, or burn them. More than likely. After all it's the defacto policy of hizbullah and hamas to kill them, with no peace ever.
Om, nomnomnom...
I was very surprised that he admitted it, at first. A rational leader would never confirm an attack like this that couldn't externally be proven.
But then I remembered this guy is from a different world, and isn't talking to us. He's a kleptocrat who stays in power by painting the image of a religious strongman, and talks to his ignorant power-base making it sound like his scientists gloriously smashed the meaningless virus as they would a Western fly.
So I don't know if this child-like line is a simplification made by the translator (who might have difficulty with technical language) or if this is how he normally talks to his people?
John
Do well-informed people make up bullshit statistics?
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html
Apparently. Check amnesty and the red cross. You will get more accurate numbers that way.
We're crying in the rain we can't push the jews into the sea, or burn them. More than likely. After all it's the defacto policy of hizbullah and hamas to kill them, with no peace ever.
Ah a well informed person. Do you know the death-rates between the parties in the last 20 years? Every year it is something like: Palestina: 700+ more than 200+ children, more than 200+ woman. Israel: 0-15. Always soldiers. But good to know you are informed!
It's true that the Israelis kill an awful lot of Palestinian civilians and that the situation in Gaza and the occupied territories is something Israel should be ashamed of. But claiming that Hamas, the al-Aqsa brigades et al. only kill soldiers is a blatant falsehood. Every time one of those bozos blows him self up on a bus it's not soldiers that get killed. On the other hand, every time the Israelis decide to 'defend them selves', drop a lavish amount of ordinance on the Gaza strip or Lebanon, send in the tanks and kill a whole bunch of civilians and a few guerillas, a thousand new recruits join Hamas and Hezbollah. The longer I watch the Israelis and the Palestinians go at it the more it becomes clear that neither party actually wants peace. They have become so used to living in state of perpetual war it's hard for them to imagine a world without it. The Palestinians are dominated to a large extend by militant religious fundamentalists and the Israelis have developed a political system that is so dominated by hard nosed ex-military types it's hard to tell where the armed forces stop and the nominally civilian government starts.
They aren't trying to build a bomb, they're building a medical research reactor! Just because they didn't want the pesky IAEA in there doesn't mean something bad is being created, does it?
Sig: I stole this sig.
Their PM accidentally admitted, back in 2006, that they did have nuclear weapons.
Two weeks ago, people talked about the diplomatic problems this worm attack would cause for Israel. There was even a few people that didn't think Iran was trying to make a nuclear bomb. What a difference two weeks makes. It turns out (from the Wikileaks release a couple of days ago) that the entire Middle East (except for the usual suspects like Hamas and Hezbollah) thinks Iran's nuclear bomb program is far more worrisome than Israel. The King of Saudi Arabia asked the US in April 2008 for military strikes against Iran's nuclear program. The UAE stated in the beginning of 2010 that it is expecting some sort of war involving the US or Israel against Iran.
From an analysis of the Stuxnet worm, it turns out to target a frequency converter made by a Iranian company that the Iranians kept secret from the IAEA. That's the agency which is supposed to be inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities and which should have been informed of this technology.
Finally, we have assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. If you think putting a worm into a uranium enrichment plant is diplomatically upsetting how about killing people? Also, there's a lot more players who can kill people than who can write sophisticated worms that only target particular systems.
I think this is going beyond diplomacy. A lot of governments agree that Iran is working on a nuclear bomb. The clever finesse moves, such as fancy computer worms, are probably exhausted. Trade blockades probably won't work (especially with China having special deals with Iran). But what will still work is destruction of the facilities and killing of the staff who work there. To be blunt, I favor this approach.
My view however is that Obama won't do it. That means then that we'll have a nuclear Iran, then nuclear Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Even if you don't give a hoot about the Middle East, it'll worry Europe and Turkey. I see expansion of nuclear forces in the EU as a distinct possibility. Turkey is one of many tricky spots. Russia will freak out if Turkey gets nukes. But how will Turkey defend itself, if a major war with a nuclear armed Iran occurs?
This is the thing that people don't get about proliferation of nuclear weapons. The fewer countries that have nuclear weapons, the easier they are to control. Conversely, once a dangerous country like Iran gets them, then all of their neighbors are going to want them as well for self-defense. Israel has been nuclear armed for perhaps forty years, but the Middle East is worried about Iran.
Just disconnect any sensitive nuclear facility from the freaking Internet. Are they so stupid?
No, they're not stupid. Of course the nuclear plant's control network is isolated from other networks. You just don't understand how this worm works.
Using one of four different previously unknown (0-day) Windows exploits, it finds its way onto new machines. Two of the exploits are network attacks (one print spooler, one RPC.) One of the exploits strikes using a bug in how Windows reads the AUTORUN.INF file, and will install the virus whenever infected removable media is inserted, such as USB sticks or CD-ROM discs. Stuxnet is written to all removable media on an infected machine. AUTORUN can be disabled, but the bug is such that it doesn't matter -- simply inserting the infected media spreads the infection.
It's stealthy, and hides itself using Windows rootkit methodology. It looks for specific 32-bit Windows operating systems and which antivirus software packages are installed, and will either fail to install if the antivirus can't be worked around, or it uses different exploits to elevate privileges depending on the security environment of the machine.
It contacts a set of command and control servers (that were taken offline) to download updates to the virus. The virus-infected machines periodically check in to those servers to see if there's new payload or software, update themselves, then spread it around to the other infected machines.
Once it finds its way onto a machine running "Step 7", a programming environment for programming Siemens industrial control systems, it modifies the code that is compiled for the control system. It uses another kind of hiding technology that acts like a rootkit here, telling the engineer that the deployed code is OK.
The engineers do their work on an infected machine connected to the regular networks. They then have to transfer their newly compiled control program data onto the isolated control network. They typically do so using USB sticks or CD-ROMs, which then infect the machine that is transmitting the code to the industrial control network.
The modifications to the data sent to the control network are subtle. Stuxnet has two payloads. The first tries to figure out that it's in an environment that matches the target by comparing frequency controller IDs with those of specific Iranian-made controllers, looks for an array of more than 32 of them, and then watches to see if they run at high speeds for a couple weeks. If so, it'll switch to a damage cycle where it over-revs the centrifuge motors, then suddenly slows them, then suddenly speeds them up again. It repeats this hour-long cycle once every 27 days or so. Even if the over-revving doesn't damage the centrifuges, the sudden slowdowns and speed-ups mixes the uranium up again, rendering the purity of the uranium inexplicably unrefined.
The other payload appears to be intended to cause more damage. It's believed to be designed to attack the control systems at the Buhesher nuclear reactor, opening and closing steam valves in order to over-stress the turbine, with the intent of destroying the 150 foot long shaft and its enclosure. It also pretends to be the reactor's environmental sensors, and reports false data back to the controller; all of this faked data makes the turbine look like everything's operating normally, but in reality a hellstorm is going on inside the turbine enclosure.
It's quite a sophisticated worm.
John
Obama sees Iran as a VERY real threat. That is why he is moving towards the umbrella. The problem is, that he inherited a nightmare from W.. He has been fighting against a nightmare economy, that had the jobs sucked out of for the previous 8 years, has 2 wars, created in the previous 8 years, has seen NK gotten the bomb and nothing done about it in the previous 8 years, is watching Burma building a secret nuke reactor in the previous 8 years, has a massive debt of just under 11 trillion (now just under 14 trillion) that was built up from 1980 on (though to Clinton's credit he did less than 1 trillion and left a balanced budget ), and massive failings in the economy far beyond what the global economy caused. Seeing as how you have been reading the wikileaks, you can see that the USA gov. recognizes that China views itself as being in a cold war with the USA.
So from Obama's POV, he had time to deal with Iran, while nearly everything else MUST BE DEALT WITH NOW.
OTH, Israel is working on how to stop Iran (consider today's actions), while developing a new MOAB and building missions for how and when to deliver it. You can bet that all of the middle east has given permission to Israel to flyover (including supplying fuel) to deliver these. My guess is that we will see this fireworks in about 1 year. A very real problem is that Iran is working on Chemical and biological bombs as well. Biological may be far far worse then a nuke, depending on what they use. I could see them inoculating their citizens and then hitting Israel and counting on it taking out the population EAST of them (iow, through the sunnis).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What many miss is that Iran and AQ are obviously working together, which is quite scary. Weapons showing up in Afghanistan being used by AQ, have traced back to Iran and China (neither of these nations are friends to the west, even though economically they seek to dominate the west). What is interesting is that AQ HATES iran, but is willing to work with them for now (and vice-versa). That speaks loudly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm not a huge supporter of Israel at all, but I sure understand why they do what they do. It's like you fighting with someone, if he:
1) Doesn't promise to not kill you.
2) He keeps hitting you and trying to kill you whenever you let him go (even if he promises not to).
It's pretty understandable if you put a choke-hold on him and not let go. Also no surprise they stop getting hit as much as long as they have that chokehold.
Not pleasant to watch, but from what I see many of the Palestinians and their supporters share a HUGE part of the blame for their situation.
Israel seems to get on reasonably with Egypt and Jordan, after both agreed to make peace with Israel. But the rest of the Arab/muslim nations including the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel and they want to ELIMINATE Israel completely.
So why should anyone be surprised when Israel does not want to loosen their chokehold on the Palestinians?
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#Camp_David_Summit_.282000.29
In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem,[13] and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory--an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."
They rejected that offer. Why don't they make a counterproposal? The Palestinians don't really want to make peace with Israel. To them peace = Israel wiped out.
Hamas (and Fatah) certainly don't want peace with Israel, as long as they follow their own charter, any peace they make with Israel can only be temporary: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic/?c=1598&a=97061
Just go see what they want.
Yes it's pretty nasty what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, slowly strangling someone is nasty. But what should they do? The Palestinians themselves don't really want to make peace with Israel and as long as fighting or opposing Jews ( just because they are Jews) is _considered_ part of Islam by significant numbers of them (google it), go figure how long that peace will last.
As for getting rid of Israel totally:
From a secular objective perspective being a citizen of Israel would be better than being a citizen of "Greater Palestine" ruled by Hamas or Fatah (assuming Israel is gone). Just look at how the various muslim nations rule themselves. They kill and abuse their own people rather often (Shiites vs Sunnis, tribe vs tribe etc). Please list down the muslim countries that are doing better than Israel, by modern standards. Remember many of them have oil, Israel doesn