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Iran Says Siemens Helped US, Israel Build Stuxnet

Posted by Soulskill on from the fair-and-balanced dept.

CWmike writes "Iran's Brigadier General, Gholam Reza Jalali, accused Siemens on Saturday with helping US and Israeli teams craft the Stuxnet worm that attacked his country's nuclear facilities. 'Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us,' Jalali told the Islamic Republic News Service. Siemens did not reply to a request for comment on Jalali's accusations. Stuxnet, which first came to light in June 2010 but hit Iranian targets in several waves starting the year before, has been extensively analyzed by security researchers. Symantec and Langner Communications say Stuxnet was designed to infiltrate Iran's nuclear enrichment program, hide in the Iranian SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) control systems that operate its plants, then force gas centrifuge motors to spin at unsafe speeds. Jalali suggested that Iranian officials would pursue Siemens in the courts, and claimed that Iranian researchers traced the attack to Israel and the US. He said information from infected systems was sent to computers in Texas."

3 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Whose enemies? by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Informative

    Iran has as much right as the US does to make nuclear weapons.

    Not according to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty they signed.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
  2. Re:Whose enemies? by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) established the US, USSR (Russian Federation replaced the USSR in the treaty), UK, France, and China as five "Nuclear-Weapon States". Non-Nuclear Weapon states were prohibited from, among other things, possessing, manufacturing, or acquiring nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. All 187 signatories were committed to the goal of eventual nuclear disarmament.

    So the US isn't obligated to give up nuclear weapons right away, but the US is disarming.

    SALT I&II
    INF Treaty
    START I reduced nuclear inventories by 40% - 6,000 warheads for US
    New START will reduce the US arsenal to around 1550 warheads

  3. Re:Whose enemies? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 5, Informative

    Which the US also signed. Care to explain how they're moving towards disarmenent, as the treaty obligates them to?

    I think you must've missed the whole thing about the U.S. going from over 30,000 nukes just a few decades back to under 10,000 today (of which under 2,000 are active). Kinda a big deal, but hey, why keep track of annoying facts like that?