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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.'"
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.
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.
Well, the NYTimes reports proof that it was tested in Israel, which makes Russia unlikely.
Besides didn't some Israeli general upon retirement say something to the effect of "LOL I helped kick some ass with Stux didn't I?". The whole thing smelt like Mossad to me. Frankly I honestly don't blame the Iranians for wanting the bomb as pretty much everyone in that region that hasn't kissed US bankster ass or have a bomb has been stomped on, they have the US Navy practically sitting off their coast and US drones buzzing overhead.
As has been said many times its not paranoia if they really are out to get you and the Neocons made it clear years ago that Iran was on their hit lists. If Iran says something like "We won't accept dollars for oil, only gold" like old MoMo did they'd probably be invaded before the year was out. pretty much the only way to not get stomped on by the US military anymore is to have the bomb. Kinda sad, but that's reality, the MSM is happy to dance to any tune their masters tell them to and its too easy to get the average citizen to believe anything the TV tells them to, just look at that poll where 40%+ thought we went into Iraq over 9/11.
Iran knows the clock is ticking and if they don't have the bomb some neocon is gonna come into power and squash them like a bug, if for no other reason than they don't get along with Israel and too many neocons are of the "Jesus won't come back if there aren't Jews in Zion! Come back Jesus come back!" variety. i don't know what is scarier, the Mullahs wanting a bomb or the fact that one of the most highly weaponized countries in the west have a large power base that believes the ME policy should be based on 1800 year old words written on a sheep's ass by goat herders about some 2000+ year old dead guy and how he needs a certain race in a certain place so he has a spot to park his fluffy white cloud.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Your rant is pure demagoguery.
What you seem to disregard is that Iran is now ruled exclusively by a religious leader, and that his dog 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. He does so even though Israel has never done anything bad to Iran and the two countries even had strong military relations prior to 1979.
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.
What your last paragraph is basically saying is that it's OK for Iran to destroy Israel (even if we assume that they could), because Christianity is false. Even if Christianity is false, nobody has the right to destroy another country the way Iran wants to destroy Israel.
Any conspiracy theory about stuxxnet has to explain this fact : http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10596
An Israelian general claims to have worked on Stuxxnet.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
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.
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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.
... 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.
Your rant is pure demagoguery.
What you seem to disregard is that Iran is now ruled exclusively by a religious leader, and that his dog 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. He does so even though Israel has never done anything bad to Iran and the two countries even had strong military relations prior to 1979.
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.
What your last paragraph is basically saying is that it's OK for Iran to destroy Israel (even if we assume that they could), because Christianity is false. Even if Christianity is false, nobody has the right to destroy another country the way Iran wants to destroy Israel.
First of all there is a BIG difference between stating that "Israel should not exist" and "We are going to destroy Israel." You swallowing the Israeli propaganda talking points hook line as sinker and regurgitating them is not going to convince any reason minded individual here. And how many times has the US and Israel threatned to attack them? Double standards much? Secondly. What's the difference between terrorizing other countries with stuxnet, infiltration and bombing or killing scientists, by a country or supporting a third party (insert terrorist org here) to do you bidding. If I send a CIA agent to infiltrate and blow up an arms depot or if I pay someone else to do it for me? What's the difference? What about the iran contra? Wasn't that a terrorist organization? Did we not support that organization? Why such hypocrisy? Its OK for us to support terrorist organization but no one else should right? And then there is this
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.