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Iran's Oil Industry Hit By Cyber Attacks
wiredmikey writes "Iran disconnected computer systems at a number of its oil facilities in response to a cyber attack that hit multiple industry targets during the weekend. A source at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) reportedly told Reuters that a virus was detected inside the control systems of Kharg Island oil terminal, which handles the majority of Iran's crude oil exports. In addition, computer systems at Iran's Oil Ministry and its national oil company were hit. There has been no word on the details of the malware found, but computer systems controlling several of Iran's oil facilities were disconnected from the Internet as a precaution. Oil Ministry spokesman Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar told Mehr News Agency on Monday that the attack had not caused significant damage and the worm had been detected before it could infect systems."
I hate to point fingers, but if I were to point them, they'd be straight at Tel Aviv.
before Iran retaliates and the whole thing escalates into WW3
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
In this thread, we have a computer at one of Iran's larger oil companies popping up an Avast alert due to an intern attempting to surf porn, and because of policies in place due to stuxnet, the entire computing infrastructure of Iran shuts down as a result. Gotta love spy.v.spy.
Ummm, was there a virus or not?
Never happened. True story.
After the charade surrounding the bank hack (mentioned recently on /.) I somehow doubt that the no doubt religiously correct Muslims operating Iran's defensive computer net have the capacity to accurately detect any virus, let alone eradicate it.
How's that for an oxymoron:
Dear US/Isreal, are you trying to escalate this cold war into a hot one? I know you think you can crush Iran and just need an excuse, but trying to force the development of nuclear weapons is not the way to do it. Israel in particular gets a bit closer to being nuked every time you do this, and no-one wants to see that (apart from you guys apparently).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I have absolutely no professional or political insight on this issue. Circumstantially, I think it is fairly convenient that the recent controversy about Hormuz and the duplication of the drone happened recently and this story broke, along with the whole stuxnet business. I am not comp-sci literate enough to even understand what happened with that (although, I might be on par with a lot of folks who are dealing with these issues). Are we entering a new stage of 'cyber-warfare' that has been talked about since basically WWII, or are we talking about local infiltration of systems looking to debase a reigning power regime? Is this a serious national problem for Iran, or is it Imperialistic forces taking pre-emptive steps? I probably will never know, but I would like to, just because I am a huge nerd.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
2011: Stuxnet, Iran takes its nuclear enrichment facilities off the net.
2012: Oil refineries hack, Iran takes its oil refineries off the net.
2013: Iran takes its power plants off the net.
2014: Iran takes its water treatment plants off the net.
2015: Iran takes ...
The sad thing is that other countries are much worse than that, so Iran is actually ahead of the pack.
I don't see how pp would be implicating that. And your imagination is seriously lacking. A majority of Americans at some point believed Saddam was behind 9/11, and in the military it was over 80%.
The claims about Iran aiding Al Qaedy aren't very successful.. On the other hand currently 71% of americans think Iran already has nuclear weapons (CNN nationwide poll, quality of sampling not known). While at the same time the NYTimes has stopped claiming that the west suspects Iran is working on a bomb, as a result of intelligence services speaking out loud enough. The claim has been quietly modified to "Iran might want to use their civilian program to help them to make a bomb later on".
That should teach Iran to not use windows on their computers.
And that's exactly how all the great "cyberwars" will end.
There is one country that has most of the nuclear warheads, Interfered in or even started most of the wars in the past 20 years, and is not silent on their goal for world-domination, and guess once, it is not Iran.
DON'T CONNECT CRITICAL SYSTEMS TO THE FUCKING INTERNET!
"Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
I am yelling.
You'd think the IT people who work in these sorts of critical installations whever in the world they are would have some vague clue about security. But I guess if there were no internet access they wouldn't be able to spend all day on social networks or surfing p0rn and clearly that takes priority over doing what they're fscking paid to do which is keep major infrastructure running.
When Drebin pulled the plug for the nuclear device out of the wall socket and it shut down. Fact following fiction I guess which would be funny if it wasn't so worrying.
The iranian "oil industry" is doing just fine. This attack was nothing more than a website defacement. Hardly affecting "the industry".
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Critical infrastructure systems should not be online, anyways, right? Asking for trouble!
this sounds like a windows problem
gotta love governments using windows boxes for critical services, then its no wonder they get pwned by viruses and stuff
I think the USA is the more likely culprit. Iran created an oil bourse to trade oil in non-US dollars a few years ago (the same time all those undersea internet trunk lines were "coincidentally" damaged in the Persian Gulf). The US needs to keep people trading oil in their currency at all costs, or the value of the US dollar will drastically drop and hyper-inflation will destroy the economy.
Remember what happened to Iraq when they switched to trading oil from US dollars to the Euro in November 2000: the US invaded under false pretenses and forced Iraq to immediately switch oil trading back to US dollars.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I'm not sure why parent was modded down. Everybody knows windows is more prone to virusware for several reasons. If Iran is using windows desktops in their infrastructure then they deserve this.
That Israel isn't too friendly with minorities found within its borders these days either. The whole region is full of extremists.
fucking m$ shills I can't even write windows I get modded down straight away
Quite right, they should use Macs, those fruits never get viruses.
it was a "cyber" attack and not a bored controller surfing pr0n.
so your post wouldn't be marked 'troll'
Yeah. You'd think they'd learn something.
Heck, the nuclear enrichment facility hack was introduced on a USB device - surely during a nationwide crack-down on security, such glaringly obvious holes as "oil refinery control computers are connected to the 'net" would come to someone's attention. It's much more obvious than "employees can plug USB devices into critical control systems". Oh wait... there was no nationwide crack-down on security. Obviously.
Citation needed
I really don't get your point. Facts are what back things like "Iran aiding al-Qaeda", not an opinion poll.
Fact: Weapons and explosives have been tracked from al-Qaeda to Iran.
Fact: Pakistan has been harboring al-Qaeda for more than a decade.
Fact: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran all have and have had training camps for terrorism. While it is questionable that they are Government sanctioned or not, the fact is that they were there.
I really don't give a rats ass about what some moron that follows Lindsey Lohan thinks. The average person has no training in espionage, counter-espionage, counter terrorism, intelligence gathering, etc... They listen to what the Foxnews team tells them and believe it all. I mean.. good lord they thought Sarah Palin was US President material!?!
Please save the opinion poll BS for something more important.. like "What Newt Gingrich thinks!" or "Who will be the next GOP candidate?".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Glut of natural gas from warm winter in US, bad for Russia.
Russia really benefits from higher natural gas and oil prices, doesn't it?
Seriously, after seeing that a nation can be easily crippled via Windows, how soon will the none American programmers switch to Linux? My guess is that it will happen QUICKLY.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Assuming this was an attack, and stuxnet was an attack; what happens when hostilities are resolved and the opposing countries go back to peace? Is it the responsiblity of the attacking country to clean up all the hard drives and firmware that was infected during the "war"? We all know how hard it can be to get rid of viruses/malware.
What happens when peace is declared and yet there are latent "weapons" sill self infecting the computers?
I know this is going to sound like a silly question, but...
Why the @#$% were industrial systems used to control crude oil manufacturing facilities connected to the public Internet in the first place?
you can kill more, more slowly, before anybody catches on, with a dirty bomb.
basically five pounds of nucleide dust hermetically sealed with a bunch of BBs and high explosive.
takes a lot of expertise to send a ballistic missle 2400 miles and hit the equivalent of a Volkswagen for maximum effect with a fission weapon..
takes two gomers sneaking across the border with a backpack and climbing some half-decent TV tower to do the other.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
@steveO: UNIX was to blame ...
OK actually its pretty darn typical that so many of the posts are engaging in Jew baiting or hating. Thats how /. rolls for the most part.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767
Not actually touching the reactor, but if you've studied systems safety engineering you know that screwing up a display or warning system is a perfectly adequate way to wreck things.
"Troll" and "Flamebait" mods, eh? Interesting...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.