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Iran Forced To Replace Centrifuges To Stop Stuxnet

Posted by Soulskill on from the going-to-have-to-amputate dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "Reports that Iran had recovered from the infection of the Stuxnet worm may have been overblown, as a new report suggests the country is being forced to replace thousands of expensive centrifuges damaged by the worm. The report from the website DEBKAfile cites 'intelligence sources' in claiming that Stuxnet was not purged from Iran's nuclear sites and that the country was never able to return its uranium enrichment efforts to 'normal operation.' Instead, the country has said in recent days that it is installing newer and faster centrifuges at its nuclear plants and intends to speed up the uranium enrichment process, according to the country's foreign ministry."

5 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WTF? by CaptainDelaware · · Score: 4, Informative

    How can replacing thousands of expensive centrifuges be cheaper than replacing the infected computers??!! Dude, WTF?!

    The centrifuges were damaged (due to the worm) and would remain damaged even when you replace/clean the infected computers.

  2. Re:WTF? by Freddybear · · Score: 5, Informative

    STUXNET did real physical damage to the centrifuges by playing with their operating speeds.

  3. Consider the source by andy1307 · · Score: 5, Informative
    DEBKA is NOT a reliable source. It's Israeli disinformation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debka.com

    Wired.com's Noah Shachtman wrote in 2001 that the site "clearly reports with a point of view; the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics," adding that Debka had partnered with the right-wing news site WorldNetDaily for a weekly subscription product.[3] Yediot Achronot investigative reporter Ronen Bergman states that the site relies on information from sources with an agenda, such as neo-conservative elements of the US Republican Party, "whose worldview is that the situation is bad and is only going to get worse," and that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider even 10 percent of the site's content to be reliable.[1] Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf calls Debka his "favorite alarmist Israeli website trading in rumors."[4]

  4. Re:Nuclear Iran. by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Informative

    So you mean having your leaders killed but then fighting an insurgent war for almost 10 years wasting 100s of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. If Iran were serious about wanting to destroy the Great Satan TM this sounds like one of the better approaches.

    Note that Iran lost an admitted 188000 dead (and an estimated 500K-1M dead) during their almost-eight-year-long war with Iraq.

    We've lost a total of just over 6000 fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan over a similar period.

    Somehow, I don't think that Iran would see us losing 1/30th the number of men they lost fighting Iraq (which they couldn't defeat, but we did - twice) as a "better approach".

    And this not even counting population disparities. They have 1/4 our population, and lost 30 (low end) to 160 (high end) times as many people as we did fighting in Iraq....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  5. Re:Stuxnet by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Informative

    DEBKA is a known source of Israeli military and intelligence disinformation.

    Any claim from this source is science fiction.

    http://www.informationdissemination.net/2008/08/debka-makes-us-dumber-again.html

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."