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Stuxnet Virus Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by 2 Years
masterwit writes "The Jpost article states: 'The Stuxnet virus, which has attacked Iran's nuclear facilities and which Israel is suspected of creating, has set back the Islamic Republic's nuclear program by two years, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze the program's code told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. Widespread speculation has named Israel's Military Intelligence Unit 8200, known for its advanced Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities, as the possible creator of the software, as well as the United States.'"
Stuxnet Virus Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by 2 Years...LOIC set Mastercard back 2 hours. Advantage, Stuxnet!
Guess what? We're going to be seeing this sort of thing a whole lot more. Compare the expense and risk involved in writing this virus versus firing off cruise missiles or sending planes on bombing missions or an actual ground invasion.
And to beat it all, no-one even knows who was actually responsible for this. Oh yes, the future of modern warfare and sabotage is most certainly here.
Better known as 318230.
"SIGINT" is an appropriate name for this:
SIGINT is the signal sent to a process by its controlling terminal when a user wishes to interrupt the process.
Although I would have preferred one of these instead:
SIGKILL
SIGSTOP
SIGSTFU
Okay, I made the last one up.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
to be a wedge issue in the next US elections. /rolls eyes
I don't know why people think the only strong suspects are Israel and the U.S.
If you think about it, Russia not only has a number of potential motives (was paid off by one of the other arab nations like Saudi Arabia, annoyed at Iran for some reason, wants to make money selling the "fix" to the problem...), they have countries with many hackers that are well known for ability and also not as prone to speak out about what they are doing as a team (and this was a team effort) of U.S. hackers would be. On top of THAT, Russia also has (had?) engineers on site, which they could have used as an attack vector even unknowingly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's a whole gigantic facility (possibly two) that needs to have all its machinery removed and replaced with a different type, and you really believe it's a plug and play type of deal? (Stuxnet only affects a specific machine, the Siemens S7-300, and only when attached to specific variable frequency drives [centrifuges] - this is why Stuxnet is known to be a targeted operation. The Windows infection is just meant to use way to get itself onto those specific machines, and it does no real harm on Windows machines. When attached to the variable frequency drives, it messes with the operation of the centrifuge, preventing it from enriching uranium, but largely not affecting other operations. See why people think the US and Israel did it, because of the complexity, yet?)
Put it this way; the whole interior may need to be redesigned and reworked to accommodate a new type of centrifuge. This building probably took 5-10 years to design, top to bottom, and is likely to take 2+ to rework, redesign, and get the equipment delivered, installed, and fully operational.
The problem with this approach and other similar forced social and technological engineering attempts by the west against Iran, is that it forces Iran to become more independent and self-reliant. It is true that there is a temporary short-term win, however in the long run it creates a scenario of technological escalation.
Lets review Technological Escalation ala'Iraq:
Attack Vector: IED v1.0 - Road side bomb with detonator fuse wire, bomber hides in near buy building, waits for US tanks to go past, presses red button
US Countermeasure: Train soldiers to look for suspicious packages or mounds of garbage were wire or some such are leading away from mound, once detected fire at location where wire ends up.
Attack Vector: IED v2.0 - Same as v1 but now uses a wireless trigger mechanism based on childrens walkie-talkies to set-off explosive. As before waits for US tanks to go past, presses red button
US Countermeasure: Provide signal jamming equipment on-board all patrols and tanks.
Attack Vector: IED v3.0 - Same as v2 but now uses continuous signal trigger mechanism to set-off explosive. As before waits for US tanks to go past, presses red button, but now signal stops and explosive goes kaboom!
US Countermeasure: Same as before but instead of jamming the signal, all terrestrial signals are replicated, allowing the tank/patrol to pass by without being blown up.
Attack Vector: IED v4.0 - Same as v3 uses continuous signal trigger mechanism to set-off explosive. Signal begin sent is encrypted and uses a random sequence number, As before waits for US tanks to go past, presses red button, signal stops and explosive goes kaboom!
US Countermeasure: Pray...., play crappy rock/death metal music while driving around bagdad.
Attack Vector: IED v5.0 - Same as v4, but now they have time to refine the design of the ordinates, remember the movie coneheads with Dan Akroid? Well it turns out for a really good focused explosion, all you need is a piece of steal in that shape packed with C4, with the pointy end aim at the direction you wish the explosive to fire - Armoured penetration as per and 09' pentagon report is roughly successful 85% of the time.
US Countermeasure: Pray....
Attack Vector: IED v6.0 - Same as v5, but made to be more weather resistant, with added proximity sensors, modern cars aren't made with as much steel and Iron as patrol cars or tanks - so it makes for a good differentaitor which can be use with a proximity fuse.
US Countermeasure: N/A
Do you really want to force your enemies hand like this?
Protecting our Second Commandment rights?
regardless of how awed the media is in the wake of the stuxnet worm, things like this only work once, and only under certain conditions. In any functional nuclear program there exists a very strict information systems security policy to prevent exactly this type of malicious activity from occuring. I also wouldnt be surprised if the "two years" assertion is an overstatement to placate the middle east.
Iran will likely switch from windows controllers for their Siemens PLC's to hardened linux or BSD, taking a page from chinese internet security experts and refusing to trust western code that cannot be independently evaluated. and if we remember the cold war, irans woes feel like washingtons foreign policy from the cold war being flexed all over again
Good people go to bed earlier.
And they haven't used it.
If I were the president of the country in the middle of this map, it would be almost criminally irresponsible of me not to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. The US tends to attack countries that have oil, don't have nukes, and refuse to play ball.
Oh, I think its best if nobody knows who did this.
I'm tired of this monotonic "they're out to get us and they're missiles just got modded +1 Not Funny". As far as I know Iran isn't a particularly bad country for that neck of the woods; shouting "death to X" there doesn't literally mean you're going to kill someone, you could yell it a vending machine when it swallows your quarter. Yeah, they're backwards, but at least in many cases they seem less backward than their neighbors.
A VERY interesting article with a lot of detail from (I know) Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/ A bit more detail that I'd read elsewhere. I strongly encourage everybody to read this. Quite an admirable job. But then you think that of course this could happen to control systems in the US as well. We all know countries and organizations that might be happy to attack. I'm sure this sort of thing will only grow in the years ahead.
If someone says they're going to kill you, you don't hand them a gun, and you do what you can to make sure they don't get a gun.
... I would argue that this is *proof* that a transparent national defense (as promoted by the pro-Wiki-Leaks crowd) is a very bad idea. Assuming that the U.S. is behind this (a bold assumption yes, but is highly likely), for some-one to "leak" information on this, would be a travesty.
And no: this is not flame-bait ... I just making a "case in point" observation here.
Great - so they were delayed 2 friggin years. Woop-de-doo. Now they'll get it sorted out and get back on track, and the problem is EXACTLY the same as it was beforehand.
There are only two ways to stop Iran from pursuing this - either convince them somehow it's not something they need/want to do, or use military force to make it something they CANNOT do. This did neither.
Frankly, I don't think there is any practical way out of this one. I have a hunch Iran wants nuclear weapons to be able to tell the rest of the world to bugger off - any non-nuclear power is a candidate for invasion, but a nuclear power is a different story and it's a good guess Iran wants to become non-viable as an invasion target. Given that, why would they do anything other than exactly what they say they are going to do - i.e. pursue whatever they want to? They want to be independent and non-dependent - even if they really don't want nuclear weapons, nuclear power is a good option for that and refining their fuel elsewhere just makes them a client state of the rest of the world.
Here's an interesting mental exercise - put yourself in Iran's shoes. Which course would YOU pursue? You've had a front row seat for the invasion of Iraq, been listed (effectively) as an enemy of the US, and you want to ensure your state remains its own state and not beholden to some other power. What is your best option? Trust to the good intentions and honorable behavior of others, or develop your own power/capabilities internally?
Iran probably is a danger due to their radical leadership, but expecting them to act in any interest other than their own, as THEY see it, is a pipe dream. And slowing their program by two years does absolutely nothing to change the larger picture and larger dangers, which play out over decades not years.
It also saves a *whole lot* of Iranian civilian lives.
"Israel never removed a country's inhabitants from the map."
They did. By locking them up in a ghetto. Yes, they have not _kill_ them (yet).
"They also haven't vowed the destruction of another country in the region, unlike a certain other regime in said region."
Yup. They just keep on genociding, why waste time on public vows and declarations?
The entire area was owned by the British, and largely backing the Axis due to their support of the genocide. The British gave the land to Israel, who were the ones forcibly taking said land. Not like that's never happened before in history, but people make a big deal out of it because it's Israel. I hope you're not in the US, otherwise you should get out of there, since if you are, you took the lands of native people forcibly as well.
Probably a bad idea to put a bunch of Jews in the center of a bunch of people who hate Jews, but it's not like the only reason they want to kill Jews is because their "homeland is being invaded". They were of that mindset long before Israel existed.
Also, Iran didn't exist for the last 300 years, but if you count the Persians as "Iranians" for this example, most definitely started the second Russo-Persian War.
Israel hasn't started a war, either, just to point that out - they just get embroiled in the whole "Arab Muslims tend to hate Jews" thing constantly, since they're surrounded by a bunch of countries that really, really don't like Jews (just look at the laws regarding Judaism in some of these countries). The only one that you can even possibly consider them starting a war (the Lebanon war) was a retaliation to a Lebanese assassination attempt on one of their ambassadors.
Iran actually would have plausible reasons for blaming *this* on the Jews. :P
Russia maybe not, but Israel definitely (duh!), and the US maybe (Logically, Americans who feel an affinity towards Israel would have that extra reason to be concerned about, and want to do something about, Iran's nuclear behavior)
This action of buying time, whoever did it, could come in very handy.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yes. Hundreds of thousands. Try 7,500, 1,500 of whom were killed in intra-Palestinian fighting. If you are going to claim "well, the Israelis are tergeting primarily civilians," note that the Israeli civilian casualty rate is some higher than that of the Palestinians, despite that most of the intense fighting has been in Palestinian cities.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
I hope you don't live in the US, England, Germany, or nearly any other country. Because let's face it: there isn't a fucking place on Earth that hasn't been forcibly taken from the people who (formerly) own(ed) it at some point in history. Anglos took over the Saxons, Norway took over England, Germany at one point owned Europe, the USSR owned everything east of Germany, China isn't a historical state either, Japan wasn't unified a while ago, India wasn't a state, the USA wouldn't exist, Mexico was owned for quite a long time (didn't even get to keep their language)...the list goes on, of how blind you are to history if you think one group of people has never moved in on another group's turf. It's new to history for such a global issue to be created over 8000 square miles, though.
I also said remove them from the map - outright genocide hasn't happened by their hands, despite the sequestering of land. As it turns out, they are, by a longshot, better than the Spaniards, the then-future-Americans, the Normans, the English, the Japanese, the Germans, the French, the Dutch, the Chinese...
Clippy: "I see you're trying to enrich some uranium. Would you like some help with that?"
Iranian nuclear technician: "*#@&$* Clippy must DIE"
We don't give teenage girls nukes!
Neck of the woods = Planet Earth. And yes they are.
O no they ain't? Pfft, it's a global world, I get it. So in comparison tell me something that the Iranians are doing internationally that's so much more horrible than what the US or Russia have been up to? They don't like the west being in their face all the time and they're frank about it; as I've said before, they've been fucked over by GBR and the US. Saudis, Pakistan etc. promise co-operation and at the same time do everything in their power to disrupt peace in the region.
At least Iran educates women unlike many countries and have had at times a somewhat civilized democracy. They have oil so we yell "satan", they yell "infidel" and nones the wiser; thanks in advance for modding me down.
The fucking people living in the middle east hated Jews before they moved in. You have to be a retard if you didn't understand that from the context given by the second paragraph. Oh, wait, AC, right.
In the last thousand years, until recently, there were no Jews in the Muslim world because all the Jews in those areas were slaughtered and persecuted even longer ago and Jews didn't move back in. Even the Muslim world has calmed its ways a bit in this last millennium.
You can't even legitimately bring Nazism into this on the Christian side, given their shifting associations depending on their mood. Nazism is a "religion" (read: cult) in its own right, separate from Christianity. They even prayed to that shithead.
Now the incumbents could claim with proof -a tenuous proof, if you like- that the opposition is in bed with the US and Israel and against their own country. Nobody likes collaborationists. They managed to set back the enrichment program, but strengthened the hand of conservatives far more. Time will tell if this isn't another pirric victory like in 1953.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Also, Iran didn't exist for the last 300 years, but if you count the Persians as "Iranians" for this example
"The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanian era [651 AD] and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was also known to the western world as Persia."
You seem to be purposely trying to mislead readers over the nature of Iran as a country.
[Iran] most definitely started the second Russo-Persian War.
"Fath 'Ali Shah, constantly in need of foreign subsidies, relied on the advice of British agents, who pressed him to reconquer the territories lost to Russia and pledged their support to military action."
So they were retaking land that Russia had taken from them 13 years earlier, at the end of the war Russia started with Iran (Persian). This is basically just continuing a war, definitely not something warlike. Also, they were put up to it by the British. Geez.
And as if 200 years of not starting wars wasn't enough to indicate that these aren't hotheaded people that go around making trouble for no reason.
I hope you're not in the US, otherwise you should get out of there, since if you are, you took the lands of native people forcibly as well.
Maybe you are thinking of Canada. I don't think anybody is under the impression that U.S. is a non-violent country that is all nice to their neighbors (or anybody else). If anything, you've shown why the world should be more concerned with the U.S. having nuclear weapons than Iran.
Put aside your agenda and look at the facts; Iran historically is a far more peaceful country than either Israel or the U.S.
There were Jews and Arabs living in the area long before it became the modern Israel. The problems today are the result of mass exodus and the (violent) expansion of Jewish settlements. The resistance and politics on either side has grown into a ultranationalistic psychotic fantasy. Nobody actually cared about the opinion of the people already living there when the borders were first drawn, so the first war was inevitable. Jewish nationalism was condemned by many a notable jew at the time.
It's sad how boths sides play politics exploiting their own people. Every death is used to promote selfish agenda, every military action is because of safety. Of course they don't own the people, but that's the convenient illusion to work with. We most probably end up to a single state and a similar struggle as in South Africa.
No, they're not terrorists. Terrorists want public, indiscriminate carnage for political purposes.
And they're not criminals. Criminals have distinct motives.
The people who made Stuxnet are military saboteurs.
Ahem. Loose lips sink ships.
The largest killer of Palestinians is the Palestinians themselves, then the Lebanese, followed by Jordan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_casualties_of_war).
Never let facts get in the way of a good prejudice, hey?
>>...is that you, General Electric? Or Siemens?
Is that you, shill for the coal mining industry?
by US and Israel. I think this is why Knesset member Lieberman is so concerned about Wikileaks; something they have confirms this program.
Good 'ol clean coal. For whatever reason, many people today actually believe all coal energy is clean. The reality is, even clean coal is dirty and especially dangerous to coal miners.
IIRC, more people die every year from coal than from the entire history of nuclear energy, even including Chernobyl.
They have been successful in killing hundreds of thousands Palestinian without those nukes.
Another poster shot down your hundreds of thousands comment. So, for your enjoyment, here are Palestinians launching rockets into Israeli neighborhoods from a boys school on their own territory.
You tell by the distance from the school that the Palestinians are sincere with their stated goals of wanting peace and safety for their people. I mean, that launcher is at least one meter from the school. The only way to be closer would be if these "militants" had babies in backpacks as they ran back and forth launching the rockets.
What saintly people you support.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
"As if the Palestinians aren't killing (and attempting to kill) Israelis?"
Yes, they do. Though they kill about 100 times less civilians than Israel.
Certainly not for lack of trying. Also nice job trying to equate the two sides- most if not all Palestinians are killed trying to commit acts of terror (or are unfortunately nearby), while most Israelis killed were civilians who were hit randomly by snipers, or victims of random shelling of civilian areas. Hardly equatable. Just because the Israelis have bomb shelters in their houses and bullet-proof school buses (yes, they actually had to bullet-proof their school buses!) doesn't mean it's OK to shoot at them.
"Please, do apply the same standard to them."
Of course. Palestinian terror should be stopped.
"They have no plans to commit genocide on Palestinians, either, and if you think they do, you're a fucking moron."
Who knows? Israeli army might have these plans and is just waiting for a good moment to enact them (say, for a nuclear strike on Israel by someone).
"Who knows?" Really, is that your argument? Using that logic, you could make any crazy claim. If they wanted to commit genocide on the Palestinians, they have had plenty of chances- and they've probably killed fewer Palestinians than other Palestinians have.
Right now Palestine is living under apartheid conditions. Citizens of Palestine are not allowed to have their own country, foreign trade (even though they have access to seaports), etc. And yet they are also not citizens of Israel.
There are plenty of 'Palestinians' who are citizens of Israel- living in Israel. Are the Israelis supposed to give citizenship to people who don't live in Israel? If the Palestinians want their own country, they need to stop attacking Israel, and elect better leaders. Those two just might be connected...
Or how about recent demolitions of Arab houses in Jerusalem (because they don't have permissions) while at the same time building settlements (without any permissions - which is A-OK).
OK, show me a civilized country where you can build a house without permits? Arab houses build with permits are not demolished. The Israeli construction has the permission of the local government, which again is usually considered sufficient. Israeli buildings without permits are also demolished.
Or the way Israel is sabotaging peace talks - every time there's at least a hope for a good result, Israel does something to disrupt it. Like shooting rockets at wheelchairs, changing pledge of allegiance, etc.
Israel sabotages the peace talks? Are those actions (btw, wtf are you talking about, please provide reference) really more damaging than, say, shooting mortars and missiles randomly into civilian areas like the Palestinians have been doing for years?
Name three countries please that the US has attacked that have oil, that don't have nukes, and that refuse to play ball.