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Stuxnet Still Out of Control At Iran Nuclear Sites
Velcroman1 writes "Iran's nuclear program is still in chaos despite its leaders' adamant claim that they have contained the computer worm that attacked their facilities, cybersecurity experts in the US and Europe say. Last week President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after months of denials, admitted that the worm had penetrated Iran's nuclear sites, but he said it was detected and controlled. The second part of that claim, experts say, doesn't ring true. Owners of several security sites have discovered huge bumps in traffic from Iran, as the country tries to deal with Stuxnet. 'Our traffic from Iran has really spiked,' said a corporate officer who asked that neither he nor his company be named. 'Iran now represents 14.9 percent of total traffic, surpassing the United States with a total of 12.1 percent.'"
...patch Tuesday is coming. ;)
Unlike those kids at Anonymous, the perpetrators of stuxnet are showing who are the real hacktivists.
Targeted precise strike on Iran's nuclear capabilities, this is a bigger win for freedom and security in the free world and anything wikileaks or their supporters could dream of doing.
I commend these hackers for slowing down the evil Iranian government's nuclear ambitions.
I think this attack just shows the difference that good engineering can make. Most worms out there are relatively unsophisticated, or are developed by people with limited means to pull off quick scams.
Stuxnet shows what a truly determined adversary can do. One who knows your internal processes. One who understands your industry-specific software - the stuff nobody outside the industry ever touches. One who has a large team of talented programmers, carefully designing and building the attack. One who has access to government resources - the ability to tap communications lines, inject traffic, etc. One who is funded strategically - they don't want to hold your business for ransom for $1M, they want your $100B company to collapse so that one they favor can take over, or whatever.
The software out there that runs on intranets around the world is some of the most insecure stuff you'll ever see. It rarely gets subjected to serious attack, and the vulnerabilities aren't evident to the average corporate IT guy who is just doing basic due-diligence. Your average PHB doesn't want to pay for testing that will actually uncover serious flaws - they want the system to look good to their customers and have the right bells and whistles - and pricetag.
We'll see more of these attacks in the future - count on it...
Ahmadinejad's speech needs to be heard from the perspective of knowing something of Persian culture. We tend to think we understand people by what they say and in this case and, frankly in most cases we do not when Iranians speak. For example: If someone dies, it is considered not polite to just say "Shogi is dead". You break it gradually. So on the first inquiry, "Shogi is feeling unwell" is the reply, then, "Shogi took a turn for the worse" , then "Shogi has passed". Also, it is considered dishonorable for a man to admit ignorance. This makes it very hard to teach new ideas in Iran. Speak to a Persian and you are met with "Yes Yes, this I know, next thing please" The Persian culture is actually a very beautiful thing full of warm people, but they are NOT American People. They are a seperate culture. when Ahmadinejad announces ____ fill blank. we believe him, Persians think "there goes Dinner Jacket again.."
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
If you read about how this thing works, the real payload is a rootkit for a motor drive plc built by an Iranian manufacturer and spinning in the range needed to enrich uranium. It was also targetted at the desktop software designed to program said motor drive, which is windows. If they were running Linux, I'm sure there are a few zero day sploits out there suitible for hiding a rootkit dropper. The people that made this thing had time, information, legitimate driver signing certificates, and resources. I doubt there are many platforms that can deal with such a determined attacker.
The columnist who writes for Asia Times On-line (www.atimes.com) under the name Spengler foresaw this situation last year. He noted that 95+% off the software that was being used in Iran was 'pirate-ware' from the West. He noted that there was an Iranian government-run file download site that held hundreds of popular Western software packages along with their kraks, passwords, and keygens. He predicted that this would allow viruses to run amok throughout Iran at some point in the future.
He also quotes a BBC reporter who states that almost nobody except government officials and their goon squads (and old ladies, of course) still believes in fundamental Islam in Iran. She (the BBC reporter) says that only about 2% of the population regularly go to Friday services at the mosques in Iran. And over 5% of Iranians are addicted to cheap Afghanistan heroin, the highest addiction rate in the world. Unemployment among the young is in reality over 50%. She says that Iran currently resembles the Soviet Union in the late 1980's; it's a country that will just fall apart in the next ten years if the rest of the world just leaves them alone and lets it happen.
At the time of the revolution in 1978, Iran's population was about 27 million (I remember the number quoted as 50 million at the time) and now it is over 70 million: a direct result of Khomeini's exortation for young people to -'get a-fuckin'- (in a manner of speaking) and make lots of babies. When Khomeini died that policy died also, and Iran launched a massive birth-control program. Now, the children of the revolution are having almost no babies and the birth-rate in Iran is 1.6 children per couple; one of the lowest in the world. But their remains this huge bulge in the population demographic there; all the people born in the 1980's.
They call themselves 'the burnt generation'.
If any of this is true then we shouldn't worry too much about Iran. We should never actually believe anything that they say. And we should, on an individual-to-individual basis, offer whatever assistance that we can. Nevertheless, I would recommend NOT offering any detailed technical assistance to people in Iran on any specific technological project over the web until the Iranian government stops all this 'Death To America' nonsense as offical government policy.
Thank you.
So Stuxnet chatter is still observed around the planet, including in Iran and the US. Duh.
Now how exactly does this "expert" come to the conclusion that, somehow, activity from the US etc must be from infected home PCs, yet the same from Iran must be from some seekret uranium enrichment plant, which typically wound not be connected to the internet?
Oh, my bad, forgot, this comes from ScareTV... Never mind.
Angry people... like you?
Hey, this is a serious "nerds at war" story. Slashdot would be remiss to not cover what might be greatest exploit of weapons grade professional hacking in world history. How long before Slashdot "friends" find themselves on opposite sides of an actual war where key infrastructure is literally exploding? Because that's exactly what those worm coders did: Blow up uranium centrifuges in militarized underground bunkers. This really is the start of a new era in the history of nerddom, and if anything, it should be getting more attention from nerds. Maybe some of the authors of that worm even have user accounts here.