Iran Says Siemens Helped US, Israel Build Stuxnet

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."

Comments

Whose enemies?

[mangu]

FTA: "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,"

Define 'enemies', please. From the rest of the world's POV, Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemy with equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Re:Whose enemies?

[ae1294]

FTA: "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,"

Define 'enemies', please. From the rest of the world's POV, Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemy with equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

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

Re:Whose enemies?

[JBMcB]

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

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

Re:Whose enemies?

[Wyatt Earp]

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

Re:Whose enemies?

[vxice]

"Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemy with equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons" citation please. According to numerous reports by the IAEA there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Re:Whose enemies?

[Anubis IV]

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?

Re:Whose enemies?

[prgrmr]

Sure. There's the SALT 1, SALT II, START I, START II, START III, SORT and New START treaties with the USSR/Russian Federation. The US had 32,000 nuclear weapons in the 1960s, and are down to a little over 3,000 weapons deployed, and another few thousand in inventory, being decommissioned or used for R&D, with the full implementation of the New START treaty dropping deployed weapons to 1,550.

It's physically and politically impossible to eliminate 32,000 nukes over-night. And while you may argue with the length of the time table, a 95% reduction in weapons that are manned and ready to use certainly ought to count for "moving".

Re:Whose enemies?

[zonky]

Agreed, reduction has occurred. But you're not naive enough to sit their and pretend that Disarmament was ever the intention of the Nuclear powers under this treaty. The NPT was a political tool to coerce nation states into a public declaration that they wouldn't seek Nuclear Weapons - a damned if they do, and a damned if they don't approach. It completely fails to address the fact that Middle Eastern nation states live next door to a nuclear power who they have been at war at multiple times over the later half of the 20th Century who they distrust.

Re:Whose enemies?

[Wyatt Earp]

Israel didn't sign the NNPT, nor did India, Pakistan, or the DPRK, unlike India , the DPRK and Pakistan, Israel never tested a nuclear weapon, hasn't threatened anyone with one.

Iran signed and ratified the NNPT, so it's supposed to follow the rules.
So bringing Israel into a discussion about NNPT does what exactly?

I see, and the facts show that the US, Russian Federation, UK, France are all decreasing their nuclear stockpiles over time, China really isn't increasing theirs while a number of former Soviet states that had nuclear weapons gave them up (Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine).

So I guess that the nuclear powers are slowly abiding by the stipulation in the NNPT to reduce nuclear stockpiles.

Re:Whose enemies?

[zonky]

Israel has never publically confirmed a nuclear test - but the Vela Incident has always assumed to be a combined South Africa/Israel test.

The NPT calls for disarmenent, not a reduction in stockpiles - which is sort of the point- the treaty is worthless, other than as a beating stick for large powers over smaller nation states.

Re:Whose enemies?

[ae1294]

Just fine thank you? The US has been reducing nuclear capacity for 30 years...

But yet still has the fire power to destroy the world several times over... Not to mention they have been creating larger and larger conventional weapons that rival that of atomic ones.

Re:Whose enemies?

[DeadCatX2]

Are you fucking kidding? "No one is threatening Iran"? I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

The US and Israel threaten Iran all the time. Journalists usually refer to it as "saber rattling". Mind you, Iran does not have a single nuclear weapon, and yet they are threatened repeatedly by two countries that do have an inventory of nuclear weapons.

If you really want to deal with "regional threats", how about getting Israel to ditch all their nukes? For that matter, how about getting Israel to stop stealing land from Palestinians? The settlements have done more to destabilize the region then any bellicose Iranian rhetoric.

Meanwhile, you seriously think that devout fundamentalist Muslims would really drop a nuclear weapon on their own holy land? Jerusalem is pretty important to them, too. For that matter, what evidence do you have that they want nuclear weapons, as opposed to nuclear energy?

Oh, and by the way, please leave the strawman "traitorous lover of Persians!" at the door. I can dislike Iran while simultaneously standing up against stupid people who wish to exploit the ridiculous behavior of the Iranian government for political gain.

Re:Whose enemies?

[DeadCatX2]

And don't start with that "he was mistranslated" bullshit"

Perhaps you should educate yourself?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#Translation_controversy

The Persian language has no idiom for "wipe off the map". That idiom belongs to English.

Also, he was quoting Khomeini. A better translation is "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time". Doesn't have quite the same scary ring to it, so some "journalists" decided to spice it up a bit by adding idiomatic language that doesn't exist in the native tongue.

You should also look into the long history of covert CIA ops that the US has taken in Iran. It's not very diplomatic when you engineer the overthrow of the Democratically elected government of another sovereign country.

Re:Whose enemies?

[Anubis IV]

Yeah, never mind that they are also underneath four different UN sanctions regarding their nuclear program...

I'm sure it's just hype in the media.

Potential FUD

[ackthpt]

I view everything which comes through government channels from Iran as Potential FUD. The rigged election, suppression of protests, detentions, disapperances, etc. of political opponents smells worse than when the Shah was running the country. For all we can tell they didn't really have a worm at all, but failed to read the owners manual properly.

I'm sure it's nothing...

[darien.train]

People send all sorts of crazy data to Texas all the time. I believe they publish it in their schoolbooks.

Obviously propoganda

[Taelron]

So let me get this right, they spent all this time and money to design, develope, and deploy this software. To conceal it and hide its presence, but you now want us to believe that they simply configured it to send data to an IP in Texas? If the stuxnet really did phone home with information, the developers would have programmed it to send to relays in other parts of the world to further hide its origin. If it DID send data to a Texas IP, I'd think any logical thinking person would realize its someone else trying to cast blame on the US... More FUD from Iran...

making crap up?

[raist21]

Perhaps I'm wrong on this, but I was under the impression that the controller's were part of a closed network, hence the reason for sneaking the stuxnet virus in via USB. Why on earth would it be trying to report back to anywhere?
Either, I have my facts wrong, or somebody is just making crap up to point a finger.

Thank you

[ALeavitt]

While I can not speak on the behalf of anybody else, as a member of the civilized world allow me to just say thank you Siemens, Mossad, the Pentagon, and anybody else who may have been involved in keeping the world safe by keeping nuclear arms out of the hands of genocidal dictators and oppressive theocracies.