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."

Comments

Nuclear Iran.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nuclear Iran.

[afidel]

Really, we aren't performing drone strikes, incursions, and firefights with Pakistan's border patrols on a daily basis? No, nuclear weapons alone does not make you immune from US military involvement, having a stable and friendly government is the only way to partially insure that.

Re:Nuclear Iran.

[Desler]

having a pro-US dictatorship is the only way to partially insure that.

FTFY.

Re:Nuclear Iran.

[kevinNCSU]

Because they have seen that when a country has nuclear capability no one, especially the US, fucks with them.

Yea, we would definitely never ever fuck with Russia even a little bit in the entire history of it having nuclear weapons, and certainly not Pakistan since they're nuclear armed. Well at least we wouldn't bomb them. No? We're doing that? Oh. Well, maybe just a few missiles, but we would certainly never send any troops into their territory without permission and kill- oh? oh.....wait, never mind, what are we saying again?

Re:Nuclear Iran.

[CrimsonAvenger]

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....

Re:Nuclear Iran.

[Spy Handler]

no, what you're describing is not "Fucking with them".

Fucking with them would be, launching airstrikes and cruise missiles on Pakistani capital trying to kill the leaders of the Pakistani government. Which is precisely what Obama/Hillary is doing in Libya.

Kaddafi has no nukes, so Obama is free to bomb Libya.

Pakistan has nukes, so he can't do that even if they suddenly decide today they hate the US and announce an alliance with Al Qaeda and declare jihad.

Best thing to do would've been for USA to mind its own fucking business and not get involved in the territorial disputes and internal politics of the Middle East. Btw this isn't an Obama bashing session, Dubya was three times worse than him, and actually it goes all the way back to Churchill and FDR, when they decided to play Emperor and carve out new nation-states on a whim.

not credible

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:WTF?

[CaptainDelaware]

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.

Re:WTF?

[Freddybear]

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

Consider the source

[andy1307]

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]

Re:Consider the source

[swilde23]

Not to antagonize here, but I am amused by someone saying "consider the source" linking to wikipedia to prove their point. (I don't necessarily doubt that Debka is "unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics"... it's just the principle.)

Re:Stuxnet

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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

You're all missing the point

[_0xd0ad]

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.

Totally Fixable

[1s44c]

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.