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Iran Forced To Replace Centrifuges To Stop Stuxnet
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."
How can replacing thousands of expensive centrifuges be cheaper than replacing the infected computers??!! Dude, WTF?!
Iran believes they need nuclear weapons to be taken seriously. Why? Because they have seen that when a country has nuclear capability no one, especially the US, fucks with them.
The World is going to have to pay for generations the complete and utter fucked up foreign US policy - even when we're a broke run down ex-Super Power.
DEBKAfile is not a credible source of news. I remember in Gulf War 2 when they were reporting on the imminent launch of WMD gas my Saddam on US forces. This should not be on slashdot.
Vague unsourced rumours from Debkafile should not be showing up on slashdot. Debka is meant to be read for fun, not for actual news.
Sounds fun as hell, and pretty probable too, TBH. Number one is hat Stuxnet got in there -before-; nothing keeps it from being re-inserted, possibly with modifications to avoid re-detection. Secondly is - think back to your corporate IT department and how often they make all their fixes right. They screw up sometimes, don't they?
Trust me, the Iranian government's a lot worse. They've got less expertise, less experience, less skills, and a language barrier to deal with most the time. I'd consider it a safe bet that they could've screwed up the cleanup, especially since they also tend to go cheap compared to other militaries (Look at rifles for a basic example here).
Either way, whoever's doing Stuxnet, good job here. I've got more faith in this then I do our diplomat's efforts for the reasons mentioned before - we bend over backwards for anyone who DOES have nukes and invade people who give 'em up. Doesn't take much IQ to see that throwing out your weapons program is a boneheaded idea if you're not going to take that 500 million bribe straightaway and retire before you get bit in the ass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debka.com
I'm picturing some Israeli air-force tech with a Sharpie writing "StuxNet 2.0" on a hardened spike as it gets loaded onto an aircraft...
Iran were only less skilled at censorship and keeping the lid on. Your country was better at it.
WTF? There's this site called Wikileaks... you may have heard of it...
I know that WHO seems like a evil organization, especially with all this "big med are evil and they control everything" attitude here on /. but seriously, why would WHO get into a risky business like that? There's enough money in drugs as it is.
Stuxnet 2 is coming!
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
So you're taking the Iranians' word that the virus they caught came from the US.
Dont use industrial machines that run Windows....
Just saying.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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..."
Whether it is or is not an intelligence disinformation tool, DEBKA is generally regarded as being very unreliable. I wouldn't trust anything written there unless it were confirmed by at least two other independent sources.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
And the Iranians do not consider this an act of war?
It's an editorial, for crying out loud. Of course it's biased.
The real news is that Iran is scrapping somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 centrifuges and replacing them with "faster" and "improved" ones. They supposedly announced this in a press conference, so I presume this can be independently verified apart from DEBKA's claim?
The rest of the article is conjecture, so feel free to come up with a better theory of why Iran is rebuilding their enrichment program from scratch.
Jingoism aside, I agree with you. And I think they were responsible for Stuxnet, which was a better option than a strike. But if Iran gets within a resonable timespan of developing a viable weapon, expect them to attack. They will percieve the risk associated with inaction as intollerable, and feel compelled to act.
intends to speed up the uranium enrichment process
Yeah, excellent job there, guys.
They have these awesome enrichment centers :)
(And who needs stuxnet when you've got GlaDOS?)
Do not hook up centrifuges that are suspected of ever having been infected to the new centrifuges, the networks the new centrifugres are hooked up to, or any equipment that in any way touches the new centrifuges.
N. Korea basically has a hostage situtation, it has a large enough conventional military force to do real, significant, and lasting damage to S. Korea quickly enough that the US could only retaliate in kind rather than to halt the assault.
Stuxnet is a really complex and well thought out windows worm but it's not magic and it can be beaten. Abusing holes in windows isn't some new thing that stuxnet invented.
Dealing with windows worms isn't nearly as complex as creating them.
Easy clean up process:
1) Disconnect affected windows machines from your network.
2) Overwrite the disks on these machines with zeros at least once.
3) Physically break the USB, firewire, sound, floppy connectors, extra disk connectors, serial ports, parallel ports on the motherboard of these computers. Break them in such a way they can't be fixed without significant effort.
4) Reinstall windows from clean CDs. Do not connect the machine to any network.
5) Reinstall SCADA software from clean CDs. Do not connect the machine to any network.
6) Setup one OpenBSD filtering bridge per SCADA control system to filter traffic to and from your new control machine and only allow traffic you have to. That means SCADA control traffic only. No windows update, no anti-virus updates, no domain authentications, no STP, and if possible not even ARP. Test with tcpdump and if 1 single network packet you don't fully understand gets though start again from step 1.
Done.
BTW I'm not a US citizen, a US visa holder, or in US controlled territory. I suspect that any US citizen or anyone in US controlled territory who assists Iran in any way is committing a criminal act. US export laws.. land of the free.. my arse.
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal most likely consists of warheads with yields comparable to Fat Man and Little Boy. It's delivery systems are most likely limited to those that can deliver these warheads to their immediate neighbors. The intention of the arsenal isn't to deter a super-power that sits on the other side of the world but to deter India.
The US could bomb Pakistan at will and not face any consequences it does not already face. What's Pakistan going to do, promulgate information on how to build nuclear warheads to foes of the US? Or maybe they might fund beligerents who are actively in state of war against the US?
"Stuxnet was not purged from Iran's nuclear sites... 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."
So...
now they are installing newer and faster centrifuges to get the job done faster and better... talk about backfire
Yay!?
The broken centrifuges must have cost an absolute fortune. However the development costs of something like stuxnet may well have cost more. The last thing I read on stuxnet said it contained 4 zero days and valid signed drivers from JMicron and RealTek. This thing is light years beyond the capabilities of the half-hearted IT 'consultants' like Wipro, Infosys, EDS. It's light years beyond the capabilities of any known government agency who screw up big time on even small projects.
However as you say the result is that it slowed Iran down a bit and wasted a load of Iranian money. Nothing more.
If you're going to discount a source, do it right. The article you cited just says they were employing faulty math when reporting one bit of information. I guess 34 knots is ridiculously fast for a naval group? I'll take your word for it, but it doesn't seem like a smoking gun for "This is a biased source." It's from 2008, maybe they learned what a reasonable speed for a naval group is since then?
The wiki page is somewhat more damning. The -real- reason to reject this specific article as pure rumor is the unnamed sources bit.
This just in: unnamed sources revealed to me that Iran's secret Death Star is not actually behind schedule for completion, it's actually fully functional!
So you're taking the Iranians' word that the virus they caught came from the US.
It would be sensible to assume that stuxnet came from the country with the most to lose if Iran ever got nuclear weapons. That would be Israel.
There is no way of being sure though. There are no doubt many things going on that we don't know about.
The US would consider an attack of this type an act of war....
Hasn't the US been at war basically non-stop since the war of independence? The US doesn't seem to need much pushing to go to war.
Iran were only less skilled at censorship and keeping the lid on. Your country was better at it.
WTF? There's this site called Wikileaks... you may have heard of it...
Do you believe the leaks on wikileaks detail every single incident that the public has the right to know about?
No, but I think it does a pretty good job putting a dent in the idea that we are good at keeping the lid on things...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
to notice a few key problems with the stuxnet fiasco so far:
1. no one has proven iran is intent on seeking nuclear weapons with this technology; their construction of nuclear power plants seems to run contrary to this solely western hypothesis
2. no one has yet explained why iran cannot have the same nuclear weapons as the united states and its allies. Highlighting the fact that they are state sponsors of terror is irrelevant as we've done the same thing numerous times in history. the centrifuges didnt just contract a random virus that happened to not have affected any american hardware, much the same as siberias natural gas pipeline didnt just explode on its own in 1982. iraqi scientists arent just getting killed accidentally.
Good people go to bed earlier.
But of course, Iran has only peaceful intentions, so speeding up the enrichment process couldn't possibly be a problem, right? After all, the only way it's a problem is if Iran is building nuclear weapons, and if they are, sounds like screwing with their existing centrifuges was a pretty good idea.
Israel is on the Mediterranean. Siemens is a French company. The US is across an ocean. Iraq doesn't have anything to gain from Iran getting the bomb. Afghanistan doesn't like them either. Russia wouldn't want to dilute its position as a nuclear power. Nor would Pakistan (or Islamic Pakistan would by now have just sold one of its bombs to Iran).
Frankly, nobody on the planet wants Iran to have nuclear weapons. Even the people they say are helping them are capable of giving a lot more help.
Stuxnet could have come from anywhere.
Agreed. Preferably by air delivery.
First, the stalemate vis a vis N. Korea and the US would exist even if N. Korea didn't have nukes. N. Korea could shell Seoul into oblivion before the US troops in the DMZ could move to dend Seoul. The stalemate in N. Korea exists because N. Korea has sunk practically its entire GDP into its military and has amassed it on the border, effectively holding S. Korea hostage.
Second, as far as Pakistan goes, both India and Pakistan are only nominally US allies. Either bombing the other in retaliation for US actions would be moronic. And, if Pak tried it, India is perfectly capable of retaliating in kind. India had nukes prior to Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan's nuke program is almost entirely in response to India's program. The US has little to do with it.
Now, it is possible that a destabilized Pakistan might pre-emptively strike against India. But that threat exists on a completely different plane than Pakistani responses to the US.
But infection via sneakernet is a completely other vector than coming into contact with previously infected machines. I was responding to someone who was positing such a scenario.
Of course, the same answer is appropriate to the sneakernet vector. Stuxnet successfully penetrated the existing network because someone was lazy. One might conjecture that Iran would develop a protocol to avoid such situations in the future.
As you can see from the cut-n-paste, the Wikipedia article explicitly gives sources. There is almost no original text from the Wikipedia writer. I kind of see where you're coming from, but you fail at it.
Can someone knowledgeable in setting up uranium enrichment plant systems explain us why do the machines have to be connected to not just a network, but the public Internet of all networks?
plus a chance to reboot civilization! if you are lucky!
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
iran cannot suddenly go from zero nuclear tech to h-bombs on intercontinental missiles. so that's highly unlikely to happen.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
all i've heard is that an indian comm satellite (which somehow used similar siemens hardware) was knocked out. but nothing else.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Afghanistan would get turned into a sea of glass. The US wouldn't even have to use nukes to do it either.
So long as Afghanistan has a rational self interest, they will not use their nukes on the US, or anyone else for that matter. If they used them on India, which is far more likely than using them on the US, India would retaliate in kind and China would not be very happy about an actual nuclear agressor in its back yard. For most countries, pre-emptively using nukes is a no-win proposition.
Which leaves non-state actors. For a group like al-Qaeda, using a nuke would make sense. Which is, putatively, why Pakistan turns a blind eye to US excursions into its territory. Sure, they howl and squeal about territorial sovereignty, but as long as they keep getting US aid for no longer progating nuclear technology across the globe, all they will do is howl and squeal.
Why would they bother. No one who has any choice in the matter is going to be using a Siemens PLC again, and anyone who's doing a major redesign of their next version of MachineX (which already has Siemens PLCs in it) will be struggling hard to find a way to rip them out and shitcan them.
But no doubt Siemens factored the cost of this lost future business into their bill to Mossad/ CIA.
Would you use a PLC with a known dangerous vulnerability that is out in the wild? Didn't think so.
Maybe Siemens wanted out of that field all together.
IF (and it's a real "if" ; I don't have to compare PLCs on a year-to-year basis) Siemens were really the best supplier for this sort of device, and they were a near monopoly supplier, then the whole episode in and of itself is an utter condemnation of monopolistic situations, and a strong encouragement to not use the market leader for anything, until it is not clear who is the market leader.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
is it not possible to recycle them, take out the chips that are useless and replace them with newer ones, but leave the shells intact???
They will not give voice of their plan to cleanse entire regions of dissenters on national television.