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Was Russia Behind Stuxnet?
An anonymous reader writes "Despite the U.S. and Israel being widely assumed to be responsible for Stuxnet, Russia is the more likely culprit, says U.S. Air Force cyber analyst. The nuclear gangsterism of the past 20 years gives it plenty of motive. Quoting: 'So what better way to maintain Russian interests, and innocence, than to plant a worm with digital U.S.-Israeli fingerprints? After all, Russian scientists and engineers are familiar with the cascading centrifuges whose numbers and configuration – and Siemen’s SCADA PLC controller schematics – they have full access to by virtue of designing the plants. ... the observers of the virus could alert the Iranians before full nuclear catastrophe struck. The Belarusian computer security experts who 'discovered' the code seemingly played that role well. They didn't seem too preoccupied with reverse engineering the malicious code to see what it was designed to do.'"
Let's all trust the U.S. propaganda machine. It was the Russians.
Centrifuges can't cause a catastrophe, other than of the "oh shit my centrifuge just came apart and shredded my lab" kind. There is not a nuclear chain reaction to go out of control here.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
That's the only logical explanation.
Well, the centrifuge itself doesnt. But if it somehow infects a critical PLC, like say the one that controls reactor rods, or ventilation, or whatever.
Point being, something other than centrifuges could get infected, and that something could be bad.
Governments would be wise to focus on securing the code they use rather than attacking the enemy. We already have attack capabilities and adding hack capabilities may not be nearly as valuable to nations with significant resources. On the technical front though ANY tiny nation or group with even few resources can threaten you if your code is bug ridden.
Cause in case of a sheep missing, you trust the wolf on saying it was really the bear. Riiiight. ^^
The only thing I know for a fact, is that I have not experienced any of it with my own senses, and so everything I think I "know" about this subject comes from other people, probably all of which have also not experienced it with their own senses but gotten it from even more sources, and so on and so on. With everyone in all those chains having their own set of perceptive biases in their senses and brains, and their own interests.
I can choose who to trust and who not. But most people just trust whatever fits their own model of reality best, disregarding that it might be wrong.
And the same is true for everyone of you too.
So unless it has a noticeable effect on me personally, instead of wasting my mental resources on this, I use them for something that has a bigger effect on improving my life and keeping what I have. :)
How about you?
Beyond the obvious fact that we will never know for sure who actually created it, it seems pretty naive to think a US 'cyber analyst' would say or even think anything different. After all Israel is a close US ally so it isn't like they would be interested in "telling the truth". It's like the boy who punches the other boy behind the teacher's back, of course he is not going to rat itself.
So how is this a credible source? Maybe if it came from a team of international security researchers with evidence or something I would deem it a valuable piece of analysis.
I kinda see this "research" as the ones conducted by Microsoft to evaluate IE, or Google to do so with Chrome and, oh surprise, they always come ahead. More like a political thing to say than any actual useful information or analysis being brought to light.
Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds. - wonkey_monkey
And it's unlikely the government could be bothered with this elaborate conspiracy, the modus operandi seems to be to take Iranian money and just never finish the projects since off the record Russia doesn't really like Iran anymore than anybody else does. Probably what really happened is that USA or Israel tracked down some Russians working on the project and gave them some giant piles of money in order to do plant some virus they'd made. After this went through a lot of Russian scientists got scared because Iran was interrogating everyone to try and find out who was responsible.
Having said that a lot of people think Iran wont nuke Israel because that'd kill arabs too, or that they're not insane or that USA/Russia has nukes too so it's no different. The main difference is someone like Putin is primarily interested in being a crime boss, he has no inherent desire to wipe some places he doesn't like such as Washington DC off the map. Iran on the other hand does when not slaughtering their own people does foreign policy things that don't really make sense like bombing some Jews in Argentina which had no practical benefit for Iran. They're rather juvenile as can be seen by the way they make their cute little American flag with skulls instead of stars last week. I think it's more likely they'd try to detonate a bomb through the Lebanese border to make things look more ambiguous than launch a traceable missile from Tehran. Yes that'd kill a lot of muslims too, but so did their chaining soldiers together and forcing them to march into gas attacks strategies during the war with Iraq.
No.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
its entirely possible to run an entire nuclear power plant from the control rod insertion to button that opens the front gate off a single Siemens PLC, e.g. their S7-400 with a big CPU. off the CPU comes Profibus which can go directly to input sensors, pnumatic valves, HMIs. The profibus is quite a safe thing, becasue it is just RS485 underneath. The new thing that siemens is touting is profiNET, which as the name implies is just the profibus protocol over ethernet. with control systems running off ethernet is fine, but siemens also do DIN mount 100mb/s ethernet switches where anyone can plug a laptop in and stop/start/upload more code to the entire network with their prodave application.
all i needed to see was "An anonymous reader writes:" and the-diplomat.com, this is blatant propaganda -100 score It has no newsworthy merit is inaccurate in many ways as has already been pointed out by others (centrifuge's causing meltdown???) i know america is pissed about getting caught red handed with this, and also about the missile shield debacle http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/24/us-russia-medvedev-missiledefence-idUSTRE7AN1NE20111124 that's currently ongoing but how is aggravating Russia going to help in either matter?
Were bought with money from an ATM machine, by an employee of the department of redundancy department, who almost forgot his PIN number.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
better way to maintain U.S. interests, and innocence, than to plant a worm with digital U.S.-Israeli fingerprints that look Russian made?
Their scientists are under a lot of pressure from the government Mullahs to finally get that bomb finished. Faced with insurmountable technical problems, the scientists decided to make it look like their project was sabotaged by their enemies: Israel and the US. So they wrote a virus and infected themselves with it.
So now their scientists have some more time, and the Mullahs are happy, because they can play the thing up with their own people and the international theater.
Ditto on that US drone thingie.
If you don't like that one, I'll half-bake another wacko conspiracy theory the next time this story pops up again.
Maybe I could make the "27 Club" responsible . . . ? Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse are not really dead, but are writing viruses on Marlon Brando's island near Tahiti . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I don't know. This seemed like a pretty specifically targeted piece of hardware.
Dumbing it down a whole bunch here, but say that the virus modifies the CENTRIFUGE_MAX_SPEED variable from X to X+100 or something. It's affecting a specific piece of software. It's not as if the ventilation or reactor rod system run on the same software, and even if they did it would be doubtful that they would be affected by the same command.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It is not news to anyone that we are currently living through a massive wave of anti-Russian propaganda cooked by the rampant Nazi lobby inside the GOP. However, I have to admit this particular piece is too primitive even for those guys. "U.S. Air Force cyber analyst"? Sounds like John "Adolfie" McCain to me...
Kixome takes a coffee while posting on Slashdot...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5X8I_iClpk
Aren't the centrifuges being used to enrich nuclear materials?
Couldn't a fuck-up with a centrifuge result in too much enrichment at the base of a given centrifuge tube, resulting in a criticality incident? Sure, it's far-fetched, but not outside the realm of possibility.
Sure, it's far-fetched, but not outside the realm of possibility.
You sound like those people who think crystal energy is realize because of the quantums when you say stuff like this.
Here's a hint: If you know this little about a technical topic, don't pretend you have any idea what is, or is not, in the realm of possibility.
Could this be part of a marketing campaign?
"In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1340800/
Just joking...
Bolshevik Government? Either you do not know history and were pulling the first thing that came to mind out of your ass (which I suspect to be the case since you cant even spell Bolshevik correctly), or you are just a moron. If the tea party or the occupy peoples over threw the government, and people with the same interests as are currently in power hijacked/took over the whole mess you could parallel it to the Bolsheviks.
The fox says it's the hen house....
Except that's not how you do it. If your PLC is controlling vital equipment you A) use a password . B) Have the PLC set so that online (means when the PLC is running) program changes are not allowed and C) run redundant PLCs so if there is ever a switch of code in one of them (by a worm etc.) that PLC is locked out and measures taken. However when controlling a Centrifuge one probably wouldn't use redundant PLCs. When it comes to profibus vs. Profinet I would say that the fieldbus has very little to do with security. Most modern PLCs have an ethernet connection for talking to higher level systems anyways no matter which bus you use at the field level. Also anyone WHO can write a virus for a PLC is capable of buying one of the many different devices for connecting to a Profibus or MPI port of a Siemens PLC. /Industrial-programmer (not in nuclear area)
It's just assumed that Stuxnet is SOOOO advanced that only a nation-state could devise this zero-day infiltration into the centrifuge system of Iran.
Why assume that nation-states are behind it, and not corporations? A lot of companies would be hard hit if Iran became a threat to stability. Even major defense contractors, who profit from building weapons, would see little upside in a conflict with Iran.
The news and the internet buzz all say that it has to be a government backed thing, but what if it is simpler than that? It is far simpler to imagine that a private concern is behind it. They can pay for the talent. They have as much at stake as any government.
In Soviet Russia, our cyberwarfare mean it stux to be YOU!
Well, if your idea of "catastrophe" is becoming critical and levelling a city block, then you are absolutely correct, an enrichment centrifuge cannot do that. However, that centrifuge is filled with uranium hexafluoride, which is a horrible corrosive gas that can burn through metal and will kill you if you touch or ingest it in the tiniest quantities, then I can think of quite a lot of catastrophic things that can happen, especially in a confined space with thousands of workers.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Thousands of workers monitoring a centrifuge cascade?
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
As long as one of them isn't Gordon Freeman, a cascade event isn't likely to occur...
"Do you suppose that's why God lives in the Heavens? Because he lives in fear of His creations?" - Steve Buscemi
All down to the subliminal URL http://the-diplomat.com/2011/12/10/was-russia-behind-stuxnet/?all=true
Sorry if I am wrong here, but are you not just producing wild theories here? Surely you don't know what Stuxnet intended to do, so how could you rule that it could not have caused a nuclear catastrophe?
How do you know it was not me? That I created stuxnet and make it look like the US/Israel so everybody thinks it was the Russians. Nobody would not suspect it. I didnt try to reverse engeieer the program and the Siemens parts can be bought over ebay.
except it's not CENTRIFUGE_MAX_SPEED it's VARIABLE_SPEED_MOTOR_MAX_SPEED, which was a potential problem for some of the pumps at their nuclear reactor.
It is. For a start, the centrifuges aren't full of uranium. They are full of uranium hexafluoride, a gas. No possibility of it going critical. The worst case scenario would be that containment is ruptured and the gas escapes - it's nasty stuff, about a ten on the flesh-melt-o-meter, and will quite happily burn though walls and boil the skin off of anyone who gets in it's way. If that happens it'll kill a few workers and completly destroy the centrifuge, but that's all. No boom.
Stopped reading at "says US airforce"
Citizen! It's always the Commie Mutant Traitors!
Just FYI, it's not any party that would ever ally with the west.
and thats the reason behind the anti-russian, anti-putin propaganda.
Read radical news here
Why not? It doesn't need a nuclear chain reaction to get out of control. Burning down the building with a release of vast amounts of nuclear material would suffice.
You need to read about stuxnet. The only thing it ever would do is screw with centrifuges. The gp is correct. There was no potential for catastrophe with stuxnet. That is why this conspiracy theory lacks credibility.
Really? "nuclear gangsterism"? This is a pretty specific phrase, out of a specific book. It doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet but in summaries about that book, and in this slashdot article. Anyone care to comment on how this phrase ended up in the slashdot summary?
moox. for a new generation.
http://crudeoilpeak.info/iran-crude-oil-decline-to-2016
They'll be able to continue exporting for a few years, 5-10. Then their internal consumption hits production and starts declining. This is when the shtf and people start dying.
So... What choices do they have? Given the history of the external manipulation of their country they appear quite rational.
Deleted
Send in the chimps!
may i recommend the following article, for a nice list of dead people who thought "this could never happen in a million years"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
its quite funny speaking from Europe, as the majority of the post's so far seem to portray Russian as some benign country and the US as evil. As a european we distrust the Russian's a lot more than the American's, i.e never accept a cup of tea from a Russian.
That is the problem with conspiracy theories, once you start believing in them, you can't stop believing in them. Why believe one piece of "evidence" over another? To many conspiracy theorists are just haters who hate their own country and believe nothing it says and believe everything the other side says without question.
See the drivel posted by AHuxley below. Russia doesn't like Iran, it has been fighting Muslims for decades. Sure, it might be smiling at the US problems in Afghanistan but that doesn't mean it thinks the enemy of its enemy is its friend.
Proof? Russia supplied planes AND pilots to the countries surrounding Israel. However there was a tiny detail that showed their TRUE reasons for being involved. The planes flown by Arabs were just a little bit obsolete. The modern planes had Russian pilots and flew with Russian orders. Russia has NEVER sold tech it itself couldn't easily defeat (and by that Israel or any western nation) to any country they didn't trust to keep the peace. Why do you think America won so easily in Irak? Irak was fighting with hopelessly outdated tech payed with premium dollars. Only the west is stupid enough to sell current generation tech to unstable nations. The Russians KNOW who their enemies are.
So, selling a nuclear reactor for lots of money but also making sure it is never quite effective makes perfect sense. They been doing that for decades.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sorry if I am wrong here, but are you not just producing wild theories here? Surely you don't know what Stuxnet intended to do, so how could you rule that it could not have caused a nuclear catastrophe?
There was an analysis by German researchers that he bases his information on.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/all/1
http://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_langner_cracking_stuxnet_a_21st_century_cyberweapon.html
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
typically the output of centrifuges is chained together. the output of the last centrifuge is much more enriched than the first. and where does the output of the last centrifuge go? to some holding tank? what if that last centrifuge has an accident that affects the holding tank? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_centrifuge
we dont know the specific layout of their centrifuge operation. what if they are using some sort of arrangement we dont know about?
yes it is incredibly, massively unlikely. on the other hand.
that is the same attitude held by the various managers and dead people you can find described in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
Well, the centrifuge itself doesnt. But if it somehow infects a critical PLC, like say the one that controls reactor rods, or ventilation, or whatever.
Point being, something other than centrifuges could get infected, and that something could be bad.
When it comes to industrial plants one things that is becoming more and more common are completely independent shutdown systems. The SCRAM system for Nuclear reactors is one such system, and is one of the first ones that was well speced and required by regulators. You'll find many refineries without such systems, but you won't find a Nuclear reactor.
The bottom line is that these things sit separately and monitor the plant. Sure you can go in, push buttons, start stretching the operating envelope from the PLC, but when things start getting heated the reactor will shutdown.
how could running an experiment that simulated an 'emergency shutdown' possibly lead to a criticality accident? no, that would never happen.
its entirely possible to run an entire nuclear power plant from the control rod insertion to button that opens the front gate off a single Siemens PLC
Sure it is. If you want to run afoul of every government regulation world wide regarding the control of nuclear reactors. Given how much government interest is being taken in reactors recently I doubt anyone is stupid enough to even attempt something like you're suggesting.
and neither did Hitler (the ultimate 'suicide bomber')
we cannot trust any government with nuclear weapons, but every government will eventually have an arsenal. what is the solution?
find a spaceship to fly to another planet, and study the human mind and social organizations so as to create systems which minimize the chance for a repeat of the self-immolation events like World War II, and the coming nuclear holocaust.
the FOIA sites at fbi.gov and cia.gov are full of bizarre, unbeilevable stuff.
is it likely that the US military deliberately administered LSD to people to see if it would be a good mind control drug, and that one of them leaped out of a window and died? no, but it happened.
is it likely that the Nazi government was thoroughly penetrated with Soviet agents? no, but it was.
is it likely that Israel and it's neighbors would go to war in 1967? No, but they did.
is it likely that Israel would repeatedly shoot and napalm a ship flying a huge US flag? no, but it happened.
is it likely that the head of the US OSS would come up with a plan to invite NKVD officers to the US for 'joint exercises' with US law enforcement? No, but it happened.
is it likely that the Department of Justice would charge someone with Espionage for telling a journalist that North Korea would probably test a nuclear weapon? No, but it happened.
there was a huge migration of Jewish people and other people out of Russia to Israel after the fall of most european communism, and the Soviet government was no longer around to prevent people from leaving it's constituent countries.
if you read enough spy history you will realize that every country has agents penetrated into every other country's intelligence service. Sometimes they are double, sometimes even triple agents. it can take decades for the truth to ever come out.
There was a Czech agent, for example, during WWII, who everyone thought was some big anti-Nazi hero. Turns out, he wasn't. he just made a bunch of shit up and fooled everyone - he had actually been a Nazi agent and was trying to cover his ass (play both sides) when they lost. His name was Agent A-54. This is only known because Czech researchers and academics went back into the archives and figured it out. Their books are as yet untranslated into English. And they were only published a few years ago, 60+ years after the fact.
Anything connected to Espionage or intelligence services is suffused with copious amounts of propaganda, PR work, and bullshit. it can take decades to figure out what really happened.
Thank you for pointing this out. Really interesting research.
it should be Siemens', and not Siemen’s, right?
oh wait. WWII was actually pretty awesome if you were a corporation. the nation-states needed you to make bombs, guns, airplanes (flying guns and bombs), etc. even if you are run by war criminals, use slave labor, participate in the holocaust, mass-execute civilians, and perpetrate genocide, you don't get shut down after a war. no, instead, your directors and executives continue to operate in the new 'liberated' government, and they run a PR campaign if some pesky human right whiner dares to complain about it.
the US stock market usually falls because of fraud and corruption coming to an apex (a bubble). good book: "Devil take the hindmost, A history of financial speculation" by edward chancellor.
its short for 'catastrophe bonds'. hedge funds buy and sell them so they can get rich when there is a hurricane, tornado, or 9/11 style event. people will absolutely profit from this war.
secondly, the stock markets do not crash during wars. they crash when investors realize theyve been being scammed and duped by fraud for years on end by 'financial professionals'. (1929, 1987, 2008).
thirdly, the bond markets go apeshit during war. governments love LOVE LOVE to borrow money during war. that means bonds. bonds out the ass.
fourthly, we now have these things called 'credit default swaps', which are essentially gambling on the bond market. they will go super triple-dog ape shit when there is a war with iran, and the investment banks that hold them like JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Paribas, etc etc etc, will make tons of money.
and since JP Morgan is feeding intelligence to the US government (if you dont believe me, do a search for 'jp morgan' in the wikileaks files) they have even more of an inside edge.
and i wont even get into 'mortality swaps' and 'longevity swaps'.
why do people write shit for slashdot? because they are intensely interested in a subject.
why are they intensely interested? because the subject moves them emotionally.
you have an inherent conflict of interest. you need to be emotionally detached to be a good reporter, but you wouldnt be writing in the first place (for free no less) unless you had some emotional spark that inspired you to do it.
normally, editors will balance the emotions of the reporter, but slashdot editors often leave stuff in that a newspaper editor might remove. on the other hand, newspaper editors are increasingly beholden to their corporate masters these days. so whatever.
when i wrote a story saying an innocent man was innocent, people said i was being too emotional. well, i disagreed, but i cant disagree that it is right to question authors about this type of thing. its the nature of writing.
That really glosses over the importance of the centrifuges. They are massive, expensive machines to replace, and they directly handle the material. If failure occurred during operation (which was exactly what Stuxnet was designed to do), then on top of losing the machines, the nuclear material itself would be lost. The centrifuges are a critical part of the entire program, and their loss set Iran back years. It's unlikely that "full nuclear catastrophe" was ever a plan, given Stuxnet's precise design. Iran under a nuclear fog makes for bad PR, after all.
For those of you who haven't read it, here's a great summary of the unravelling of Stuxnet, the key players, and conclusions made. Or you could listen to the US cyber analyst blame "them Ruskies".
Wish I still had my mod points with me that I didn't use - this would have been flamebait. The US destroys other countries all the time with nukes or other WMDs? Where? When?
If the US wanted to, they could have nuked the entire Muslim world after 9/11, given the popular mood in the country. They didn't, but instead, the Bush administration started pushing the Religion of Peace hogwash. I'm not suggesting that they should have wiped out any country the way Iran wants to do to Israel, but they should definitely have destroyed the military capability of Iran & Pakistan along with that of the Taliban. Today, the Obama admin continues that tradition. Democrat or Republican, both sides are ass kissers of one jihad side or the other. The Republicans brownnose the GCC emirs & sheikhs, who in turn fund anti-US activity throughout the Muslim empire, while the Democrats brownnose Hizbullah, Hamas and the Baathists.
No Muslim country should be having nukes. It's a major problem that Pakistan has it, and it'd be made worse by Iran getting it as well. With Communists, while they were evil, they were at least rational - they had the will to survive, and didn't have any martyrdom fantasies. When was the last time you heard of any Communist suicide bombers? The case of the Jihadis are different. Ahmadinejad is busy waiting for the Mahdi - the 12th Imam of the Shias, who he thinks is alive in a well in the Iranian city of Qum, and wants to have armageddon in order to accelarate his return. The Jihadis are not just evil, but irrational about it as well - they want to kill us and themselves, so MAD does not work here. You seriously want this regime to get the bomb just because of your rabid envy that only Western powers and their non-enemies - Russia, China & India - have it? And you think nuking other countries is funny, like you're playing a game of Civ?
The moral system you are alluding to, as understood in the context of the UN, is best exemplified by a fictitious island that has 10 men and 2 women. They have a vote on whether the men can rape the women @ will. The women object, but are outvoted, say 9-3 and so the 'fun' begins. So are the women immoral for not wanting to be raped? After all, theirs is the overwhelmed minority, which the island community has by & large rejected.
Substitute the 2 women with Israel & the US, and substitute the men with Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Hizbullah, Hamas, Fatah and al Qaeda, and you'll get what I mean.
When I clicked the source link I was expecting Fox News
... but Russian immigrants living in and working for Israel. The name "Stuxnet" can be transliterated to "will rot" in Russian. Which was exactly what the Iranian equipment did.
While the differences between Iranians and Arabs, Shias and Sunnis are real, it's a mistake to think that they never collude. For instance, Tajikistan, whose language is a Farsi derivative, is allied to Iran in spite of being a Sunni country. Likewise, Azerbaijan, whose people are of Turkic origin, just like Turkey, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, is allied to Turkey again in spite of being a Shia country.
It's also worth noting that Iran, despite being Shia, backs Sunni organizations like Hamas, in addition to its own proxy Hizbullah. Similarly, during the 80s war between Iran and Iraq, while much of the Arab world, except Syria, backed Iraq, Libya chose to back Iran. These things are not set in stone. While locally, Shias and Sunnis can't stand each other and often either riot or carry out terrorist acts (e.g. Sipah e Sehaba in Pakistan is a Sunni terror organization that takes it out on Shias), they have no problems allying with the other type of Muslims outside their countries when it comes to a war against Infidels.
Those darn Commies will try to corrupt your precious bodily fluids.
The Russians aren't afraid of other countries gaining nuclear capabilities, in fact most of the new nuclear powers use Russian technology and materials. If the Russians would be that concerned it would be a lot easier for them to just not sell materials/technology to everyone who asks.
It all kind of depends on how rationally the mullahs operate.
I'm pretty sure that the concept has been communicated to the Iranians, either semi-directly through back channels or through other third parties that any use of a nuclear weapon against the US or its "close allies" will result in overwhelming nuclear retaliation, the kind that might cause one to question the future of Persian culture centered around Iranian geography.
It's long been rumored that the Israelis have indirectly communicated that any NBC attack will result in nuclear retaliation against all Arab capitals and major Islamic religious sites, allowing for a certain group restraint among Arab countries not wishing to see their capital vaporized should a neighbor's anti-Israeli action get too heated.
And don't think for a second that the Soviets or the Chinese would say a word -- poking a stick at the US via Iran is valuable to the Soviets and the Chinese, but it's not worth trading nuclear strikes with the US.
One would think that Iranian leaders would take this into account when doing the calculus on nuclear weapons. Are they even worth having, outside of defensive use within their own immediate political theater? Would the cost of development be better spent on something else -- a home-grown cruise missile, long-range missile, some other expenditure?
That being said, the mullahs may not be rational -- they may be given to magical thinking and have some kind of literal belief in religion that might cause them to not care. We've certainly seen enough rank-and-file religious nuts blow themselves up.
EVERYTHING is in the realm of possibility. It is possible it will rain in the middle of the Sahara tomorrow and it is possible that Panama will have a white Christmas. It is even possible that Britney Spears is actually a superb singer. But what we all base our lives on is probability. Anything is possible (well, I'm not sure about Britney...), but some things are just a little more probable than others.
The rabbit hole is always deeper than it looks and nobody ever does anything unless their are two or three other plausible suspects
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Let us at least try to use the proper terminology.
In the context of fission, "critical" means, more or less, "producing as many neutrons as we consume".
In other words, when a nuclear reactor is producing power, it is "critical". "Critical" does NOT imply "levelling a city block" (well, the nuclear plant a few miles away doesn't level a city block regularly, though it is critical basically all the time)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
From last week: Dwight displays a porcupine in his drawer and blames it on Jim. Jim calls animal control and relays questions:
JIM: Does it look rabid?
DWIGHT: Yes.
JIM: Did you get get stuck with a quill?
DWIGHT: Yes.
JIM: And what is it's name?
DWIGHT: Henrietta.
JIM. Aha. [snaps phone shut]
DWIGHT: Dammit!
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It doesn't make the slightest sense. A strong Iran is in Russia's interest. If Russia wanted to keep Iran from building a bomb they could just stop supplying nuclear fuel and know-how. Or they could sabotage those plants in much more direct ways because they have access.
And if the Israeli military is not involved they're certainly playing their role well. They seem to be quite proud of Stuxnet -- rightfully so, except that they should have concealed it longer. That "the US defence and intelligence communities" might have been "caught with their pants down" is not an argument. Not everything Israel does is vetted by the US. Frankly, if I were an Israeli official I would prefer not to involve US agencies, because they have little to contribute and are a security risk.
"Trust us! We'll give you 25% MORE smoke and mirrors that the other brand of perception management!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Ahmadinejad doesn't just not get along with Israel, but calls out for the destruction of Israel pretty much any time there's an open microphone nearby
You're aware this was a (I assume deliberate) mistranslation of what was actually said? Google "Iranian mistranslation". It is however convenient for those who want war to repeat the propaganda.
He does so even though Israel has never done anything bad to Iran
You have evidence there have been no covert attacks? Your sources are clearly better than most. There are strange explosions happening in Iran at strategic sites. You think they are accidents? Who is the most likely culprit? Who is the most likely culprit for stuxnet?
You also forget that Iran spends millions of oil dollars every year funding terrorist organizations whose sole purpose is to harm and kill American and Israeli civilians.
Perhaps they see themselves as freedom fighters.
You are looking for simple black and white, good and evil; like the movies, and the people who's agenda that serves will be more than happy to serve it up to you on a platter. You should just go back to staring slack jawed at the TV and let your superiors get on with whatever it is they want to do. The very last thing you should ever do is question what you are told.
Deleted
I believe that people underestimate the possibility that a small group of anti-Iranian engineer hackers put stuxnet together. The code is a little too "American" for me to believe it was Russia although I suppose Russia could have hired US programmers. Truthfully, I don't think the CIA had the brains for stuxnet and the smartest computer groups I have seen are independent "open source" programmers and engineers. Anyone who thinks stuxnet could only have been built by a "well managed government group" is an idiot since there are so few well managed government groups. Yeah, guys at Oak Ridge maybe, but, IMO the code was too sloppy for that.
Not a catastrophe on its own, but you might get radioactive material everywhere. That's never fun to clean up.
Siemen's, seriously?
OK, the apostrophe now officially has lost all semantic meaning beyond look out for the "s"!
It is unbelievable how many unabashed neo-Nazis like you frequent this site whenever the topic of Joooooos or Israel comes up. Or are you actually a Jihadi - albeit the Sunni kind, which would explain why you are no fan of this guy? Whenever I read articles about Jews, it's like I'm visiting Stormfront. That's what /. sometimes looks like.
Any & all governments of Israel are Zionist governments by definition - Zionism is the ideology that the Jews have a God given homeland in the land of Israel. If you think that's unfair, how about demanding the right of return of Jews to Medina, which was theirs before the founder of Islam - Mohammed conquered it? Demagogery against Jews is nothing new or recent - it dates back to Mohammed, who did the first ethnic cleansing of Jews in Medina centuries before either of the Adolfs - Hitler or Eichmann - were even born. The quran and sunnah are full of verses demonizing Jews, such as calling them descendants of apes & rats, and the Hamas charter - which claims that the time will come when every rock & tree will call on Muslims telling them that there is a Jew hidden behind them - is right out of the hadiths, which is another of their wacko texts. Oh, and talking about Christ, one more right out of the Islamic texts - that in the end of times, Christ will come and either forcibly convert all Christians to Islam, or kill them.
What you are claiming about Christian support for the Jews - that rapture is their motivation - is more true about Ahmadinejad, and a clear case of projection. His wish - and the wish of a lot of Muslims worldwide, is that by accelarating an armageddon war, the Mahdi will come out and lead them to salvation. This is their vision of the messiah, very different from either Christians or Jews. And yet there are cretins who claim that Islam has the same roots as Judaism and Christianity.
Being opposed to Zionism is just a code for saying that Israel should be wiped off the map. Essentially, what Muslims want is for Israel as a Jewish state to disappear (although none of the 50 odd members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation are secular, except perhaps the 6 ex-Soviet republics, but they want all non-Muslim countries to be secular so that Muslims can work towards Islamizing them either through war or demographically) and that Muslims should be allowed to freely settle around them so that Jews can be restored to their minority status like during the caliphate, and be reduced to second class citizens. On one hand, everybody opposed apartheid when practiced by South African Whites, but everybody here is all for it when practiced by the Mohammedans against Jews, as well as Christians in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and so on.
OMG... Seriously? "Nuclear Catastrophe"? I hope you mean "uranium hexafluoride" contamination & exposure to factory workers.
Educate yourself:
http://chembase.com/pdf/readme.php?cbid=Uranium%20hexafluoride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_centrifuge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippe-type_centrifuge
A centrifuge cascade would manifest itself as aluminum or carbon fiber centrifuge rotors impacting their casing/containment. Centrifuge design is specifically intended to isolate and contain such a rotor detonation to prevent the shrapnel from "taking out" the closest neighbors.
It was largely because of the illegal importation of 7000 series aluminum pipe that a "WMD seeking Iraq" was concluded to be a viable justification for invading them & their dastardly "Oil for Euro's" program.
Other technologies which are considered "too neato" for Iraqi(& Iranian I'm sure) possession include vacuum pumps & magnetic bearings.
I'm no nuclear engineer, but I would bet you could just as easily use an air foil bearing from a supercharger. Just about any air compressor can be used to pull a strong vacuum if you put enough in series and add a "cold trap" so unless Air Conditioning unit's are banned they are pretty much fucked there.
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/al_tubes.html
Read all about it. They even have dimensions and tolerances. If you manage to get yourself a nuclear power plant or a very large set of jumper cables maybe "you too!" can refine weapons grade uranium.
IIRC, it was more subtle than that. It changed the speeds of the centrifuges, not enough to actually destroy them, but enough to ruin the batch. Seems a little too subtle for Russia.
its entirely possible to run an entire nuclear power plant from the control rod insertion to button that opens the front gate off a single Siemens PLC, e.g. their S7-400 with a big CPU. .
It isn't going to happen. I work in the (U.S.) nuclear business, specifically on reactor protection. No one would protect their reactors using such a vulnerable method. Concepts such as "Defense in Depth and Diversity" (or D3) and "Single Failure Criteria" totally rule out something like what you suggest.
You little slut! You dare insult me? You have no idea who you're dealing with, do you? I have the true power under my belt!
We will only believe you if you pen a 3 page description of what you are wearing and what you had in your tea.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Despite what the gentle readers may have read in the New York Times (based entirely on speculation and interesting coincidences), and despite what you may know about what is in the code (a mysterious registry entry noted by Symantec that MIGHT refer to the date of execution of a certain person in Iran), we really can not know for certain who was behind this malware. Some of this stuff may have been planted by others to throw everyone else off the trail.
There are means, motives, and opportunities for many who wouldn't like to see Iran armed with nuclear weapons. If you want to speculate, there are many nations to choose from.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, no it can't. The Stuxnet virus was incredibly specific; the only PLCs it affects are ones that control variable frequency drives (which are used to spin things very, very quickly with a high degree of control over RPM) made by one of two manufacturers. Control rods do not spin at thousands of RPM and are not controlled by var-freq drives of any make.
So technically yes...something other than centrifuges could get infected, and in fact did (that's how Stuxnet came to light in the first place). But I've seen control systems that were infected by it, and I can tell you first-hand that, for systems where the full suite of intended targets are not present, it's entirely harmless and has no impact on operations whatsoever.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Russia dropped nuclear bomb at Hiroshima in 1945.
Well, to be fair, it wasn't so awesome if you were a German, Soviet, Japanese, French, Italian, Romanian, Czech, Chinese, Philippine, etc. corporation. Many of the their "directors" ("leaders of the revolutionary blah, blah, blah in the case of the Soviets) wound up not among the quick by WWII's end.
If you were an American corporation, you got "managed" by the government and were not in control of your output or your profits.
What I said was completely correct, it can not go critical nor can it level a city block. The specific term for a block levelling reaction is I believe is "high yield prompt criticality excursion", which sounds terrible and didn't need to be said. Criticality is something achieved in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs, it is not achieved in centrifuges, even when they fail, thus there is no energy release beyond the normal energy released by nuclear decay. Furthermore, that plant you live near does not blow up precisely because it is designed not to, with moderators and coolants. Should its fuel rods be stacked together outside by some guy who wants to make a fort, the situation would be quite different (though 5% enriched really doesn't have much ability to actually blow up).
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Russia is actually working WITH Iran on their nuclear program - have been for a couple of decades now. That's the reason they didn't take part in the coalition in the first Gulf war; they were trading nuke parts for oil. This is just misdirection on the part of the U.S. - a denial that is a form of confirmation. I recently spoke to someone who works at a DoD facility devoted to cyber-security. Our conversation was going fine until the word Stuxnet left my lips. At that point, he didn't utter another word. And I wasn't asking him for information, just expressing my admiration for the handiwork - whoever's it was. Another denial that looks like a confirmation.
there's nothing wrong with patriotism and pride in your country beyond the leverage it provides to those who would wish to manipulate you. Oh and its a sin.
And the extraordinary sophistication of the code, the P2P network, command-and-control routines, tech specs to Siemens tech, Profibus tech, Vacon tech, Fararo Paya tech, etc., not to mention all those exploits covered in various studies and the fine links Johannes provided, stridently points to the USA (w/possible Israeli and Euro collaboration).
And what the bloody hell is a cyber analyst?????? Geez Louise........
(Prefinanced propaganda books: "The Watchers" --- "Cyber War" ---- "Tiger Trap" --- "Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy" ---- of course, in each of these the authors make some serious boo-boos, which allows for enlightening further research, e.g., bottom of page 190 or 191 in Javers' Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy leads to Jeffrey Starr, his connection to Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group [and WTF he's on loan from the DIA??] which leads to following Starr's family history and further employment as Washington lobbyist for no. one private security firm and global privatizer, G4S; plus in the Tiger Trap Wise screws up on pp. 88, 101, 105, 106, etc., which further lends credence to Sibel Edmonds' expose of an internal, secret arms operation involved in the secret selling of nuclear tech (Wise doesn't mention this, but his serious mistakes point in that direction), etc., etc.)
and his flakey book, Cyber War is mentioned in flakey article.....
Plus, countries where top flight hardware/software hackers are presently jailed, Netherlands, Sweden & USA, most probably had captive talent which they utilized. Please avoid chronic cluelessness in the future......
Becoming common? this has been standard practice for decades. The interlocks and safety system is completely separate, runs off separate power supply, etc.
Even on something as simple as your household oven, there's the main control thermostat, and a second one that can also turn off the heat if it goes way overtemp.
There's so many Eastern European - Israeli organized crime connections through families who immigrated to Israel from from the former Eastern Bloc. Kind of hard to define.
Kind of like the my Ireland ancestors connections to the Irish mob and the IRA. Hard to define as either just Irish or just American
... Furthermore, that plant you live near does not blow up precisely because it is designed not to, with moderators and coolants....
Surely the moderator is designed to slow down the neutrons, so that they cause can cause fission. The moderator is not a safety feature (in fact it is the opposite od a safety feature as it causes the chain-reaction to be sustained, rather than it being killed because there are no slow neutrons).
Just sayin'
I agree, thats not how you do it, But wasnt stuxnet expoliting the functionality of a windows PC talking to a CPU? a la prodave. AB PLCs come to mind, there was a website going round that explained if you password protect the PLC and then tried to unlock it later, the password would be send back to compare against in the programming software. They probably fixed that, but next time im on a PN-DP site, im going to try to find the easter egg HTTP site on the PN CPU!
Anyone who knows anything about nuclear reactor security or international espionage isn't going to be posting here.
What we have instead, are a bunch of armchair experts whose real world exposure to nuclear plant operation is from watching The Simpsons. It's quite hilarious watching them argue with each other while the first group, if any of them are reading this, would be shaking their head and smiling.
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If the argumentation is that the signs that USA did it, really proves that Russia was behind it and is framing USA. Does that not mean that there are in fact signs that Russia did it, which proves that USA did it to frame Russia?
Greetings,
I'm certain many of you are aware that there's been cosiderable costs incurred in manufacturing to protect the PLCs they use for process control against the same kind of attack since.
DeLoe
They are full of uranium hexafluoride, a gas. No possibility of it going critical.
I have a small hobby. I occasionally fact check interesting things nuclear advocates say on Slashdot. The problem with this hobby is it scares me. For example; uranium hexafluoride, it turns out, crystallises as a solid at room temperature (so could easily form a critical mass) an there have even been experiments with using it directly in nuclear reactors which means it must be able to go critical.
Please explain how my understanding is wrong. I would really appreciate being wrong.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
And even if there weren't covert operations. How does "organizing a military coup to overthrow a democratically elected government" not count as doing harm to a country?
Actually I see no reason why the first three are unlikely, I'll give you the forth, the fifth, well I've no idea what OSS or NKVD stand for so I can't comment on that, and the sixth is unlikely but not too bizarre.