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.'"

Comments

And the winner is...

[jav1231]

Stuxnet Virus Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by 2 Years...LOIC set Mastercard back 2 hours. Advantage, Stuxnet!

Re:And the winner is...

[jav1231]

So did you write Stuxnet or are you running LOIC? If the later might I suggest going outside. I mean just to see it.

Re:And the winner is...

[ShakaUVM]

>>Early breeder reactor designs were inherently unstable, allowing situations where there could be a runaway reaction.

You mean back in the 1950s when the first breeder reactors were built? :p Sure, I'll grant you that.

The modern Type IV reactors safe(r), and since they get rid of most of the waste that causes most of the political problems with nuclear power, I'd say that it was a pretty bad decision by Clinton to kill the IFR research project.

>>Building one and having it blow its top would have been a far worse setback than the path we did take.

Sure. And if every reactor in the planet exploded right now, that would be bad, too. But if you're looking at risk levels from nuclear vs. other plants, the numbers just aren't there to support the anti-nuclear crowd. If nuclear killed even a hundredth of the people that have died from coal power (while it has been producing about half the power for our nation vs. coal), we'd have panicked and shut down all of the nuclear sites ages ago. We're fundamentally stupid about it.

>>I'd agree completely that what we need need now is solid, proven breeder reactor tech, and the opportunity to get it was wasted. I just wanted to provide an alternative to the "grass is always greener" thinking - it could have been a disaster too.

Sure, and I get what you're saying. But the main reason Carter and Clinton banned breeder reactors was not for safety reasons, but really about concerns over nuclear proliferation. The thinking is that if we had breeder reactors we'd not be able to morally take the high ground when we tried to stop Iran from going nuclear... oh wait. And also certain fears that people could steal the Plutonium coming out of the reactors and turn them into terrorist bombs. (Because, you know, if there's any place in America that is easy to steal from, it's a nuclear plant with all of its barbed wire and armed guards with machine guns.)

Re:And the winner is...

[MrKaos]

(You know all the political mess we are in over waste products, and how California has banned new nuclear until the waste issue is resolved? Breeder reactors use nuclear 'waste' as fuel, burning over 99% of the fuel, instead of the 1% or so efficiency we get from traditional PWR/BWR reactors. IFRs can also burn depleted uranium, and weapons-grade plutonium.)

You are confusing two different types of *FAST* reactors technology, breeder and burner. Roughly, the process Breeder reactors perform combine similar quantities of two other elements with plutonium within the reactor and transmute them into plutonium. In other words Breeder reactors produce about three times as much plutonium that goes in creating a plutonium economy.

The IFR is a Burner reactor prototyped at Argonne National Laboratory's EBR-II. It achieved a burnup rate of 20% of the fuel before the remainder of the fuel has to be removed and reprocessed. The ambition was to have reprocessing facilities and all other facilities on-site, hence the name Integral Fast Reactor. Given this knowledge your claim that Californian policy on Nuclear reactors is a mess is, at best, not well informed.

Nah, Jimmy Carter set back the US nuclear program by 30 years by banning breeder reactors.

No he didn't. While people like to piss on Carter for this decision it is highly ignorant to do so. We have over 70,000 tons of waste plutonium *now* as a result of the once through cycle reactors we have now and still no plan to properly contain it. Had Carter not stepped in and ended the plutonium economy 30 years ago we would have an epidemic of plutonium production. Additionally Breeder reactors are much less forgiving than the once through reactor cycles that are currently in operation. Carter's decision to ban breeder reactors was a wise decision considering the lack of appropriate facilities to contain plutonium available today.

Well, Clinton can take some of the blame too, for killing the IFR

Indeed. Killing the research into IFR and it's complementary processes was probably a mistake. However material technology is still not available to make IFR a working proposition, especially as the reactor ages. IFR is only appropriate technology when the lifespan of the reactor matches the decay time of it's waste product. Yes, I am saying we should learn how to build a reactor that lasts 600-1000 years as the decommission of an IFR reactor every 40-60 years severely reduces it's viability and practicality. Still developing the surrounding Integral technologies would be a good step forward until the material technology is available for the reactor as the fuel reprocessing technology is as important as the reactor itself.

You mean back in the 1950s when the first breeder reactors were built? :p Sure, I'll grant you that...The modern Type IV reactors safe(r), and since they get rid of most of the waste that causes most of the political problems with nuclear power,

Again you are confusing Breeder and Burner reactor technology. Breeder reactors allow less time to control run away reactions. Since they are cooled with sodium as the age any air that leaks into the system makes them explosive and they contain far more radioactive materials than a reactor like Chernobyl. The only new breeder reactor under construction that I know of is in India, in a flood prone area and sodium and water aren't friends in a nuclear reactor.

I'd say that it was a pretty bad decision by Clinton to kill the IFR research project.

Yes it was, because it has great promise for burning up not only pu-239 but also U-238, or depleted uranium, DU.

if you're looking at risk levels from nuclear vs. other plants, the numbers just aren't there to support the anti-nuclear crowd. If nuclear killed even a hundr

Success

[Dan East]

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.

Re:Success

[Anonymous Coward]

And to beat it all, no-one even knows who was actually responsible for this.

True, but we do know that it was a country which can keep secrets.

Problematic Approach

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Problematic Approach

[cowwoc2001]

More sophisticated = more costly. If the end-result of this game is raising the cost for Iran to seek nuclear weapons then it's a win in its own right.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Two years...?

[surfdaddy]

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.

Re:SIGINT?

[Anonymous Coward]

SIGHUP -> SIGOHNO
SIGINT -> SIGPWND
SIGQUIT -> SIGWUT
SIGILL -> SIGWTF
SIGABRT -> SIGORLY
SIGTRAP -> SIGRAEP
SIGKILL -> SIGSTFU
SIGSEGV -> SIGOMFG
SIGTERM -> SIGRTFM
SIGSTOP -> SIGKTHX
SIGCONT -> SIGGOGO

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[blackraven14250]

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.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[blackraven14250]

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...