Iran Claims New Cyber Attack On Its Nuclear Plants, Blames US and Allies

judgecorp writes "Iran has reported that its nuclear facilities are under a sustained cyber attack which it blames on the U.S., UK and Israel. America and Israel created Stuxnet, and have been accused of starting the Flame worm." And once a country admits that it's created such software, publicly deflecting such blame gets a lot harder.

Comments

ACs admit to cyber-espionage.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one "officially" has admitted to Flames, Stuxnet, or otherwise. It's always some anonymous source, or former (apparently the current ones are too busy to give interviews) official.

Re:ACs admit to cyber-espionage.

[Anonymous Coward]

you sure?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirmed-us-israel-created-stuxnet-lost-control-of-it/?utm_source=Ars+Technica+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8d7f11ba51-September_02_2011_Newsletter&utm_medium=email

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=2

Re:ACs admit to cyber-espionage.

[Anonymous Coward]

God, will people even read the articles they try to use as proof? In BOTH articles, it's stated that the articles is based on Sanger's Book. They are using the book as "proof of confirmation" in which case I can easily argue that it is NOT. Confirmation = Confirmation of the accused or hard proof. In both respects, the book is not either of these.

Referencing a book by the person who first made the accusation, Confirmation from the person who first made the accusation? I think not...

Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

Your nuclear weapons program for enriching uranium was fucked up because of a computer virus.

You know what DOESN'T need highly enriched uranium? CANDU and Throrium reactors. Gee, I wonder why Iran isn't interested in those, the only difference is that they can't be used to make nuclear weapons...

Re:Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

Thorium reactors absolutely do require uranium. Thorium is not a fissile material. Thorium is a stock material that is bread in to uranium during the course of reactor operation. The actual reactions are uranium, and said reactions create more uranium, which is in turn fissioned, etc etc. The idea is you feed more thorium in to the reactor "soup" and the reaction continues.

The problems with thorium reactors that have not been solved:

1. The reactor has to be primed with fissile uranium. They can not self start with thorium alone.

2. The reactor soup mentioned above is a very complex reaction with dozens of intermediate elements. Imagine having a soup of liquid metal with dozens of elements that are all constantly transmuting in to other elements. Nobody has come up with a suitable "soup" that will have desirable properties in any sort of long term use scenario. Either too much gas, or the mix solidifies, or turns in to something that eats through the walls of the reactor vessel, or the reaction gets poisened and stalls.

3. Even if a good "soup" is developed, the reactor material does need to be processed and refined from time to time as undesirable bulk products build up. I dont' see how processing tons of hot molten radioactive material can be anything but nasty and environmentally hazardous.

Re:Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

The details are always a bit tricky. To get usable weapons-grade plutonium you have to run it through the reactor for relatively brief periods of time, otherwise you get isotopes of plutonium that make it difficult to make into bomb material (high spontaneous decay rates, which makes it harder to assemble a critical mass -- you get a "fizzle"), and that are even messier to isotopically separate out than uranium isotopes. So, you swap the fuel through the reactor really quickly (I think it's in a few days or weeks, instead of many months). In that respect CANDU reactors could be suitable because they don't have to shut down while swapping fuel, although dedicated plutonium-production reactors are probably better. Anyway, you still have to run a very unusual and obviously inefficient fueling schedule on a power reactor that would be detectable with any kind of reasonable monitoring. So, build all the CANDU reactors you like, use natural uranium so that isotopic enrichment systems aren't necessary, but subject them to the international monitoring that you would have to do anyway, and make sure people aren't running a rapid fuel-swap schedule that would be a signature of trying to make weapon's grade plutonium in any type of reactor.

The reactor in India was a heavy-water reactor, but not technically a CANDU power reactor. It was a "research" reactor and was not subjected to the monitoring that was required for the power reactors. It is believed that India derived a similar design from the research reactor and used that for the main plutonium production. So, the proliferation concerns are real, but not that different from any other type of reactor if not properly monitored.

Tons of detail at this page.

Admits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where has once have the government admit they created it? Both links are just basically from David Sanger and his book where the first link is an article by him and the 2nd link an adaptation of the story-line from his book (which they state at the very bottom of the article).

I'd hardly call that the government admitting it when it's more like an accusation from someone with possible inside sources. Nowhere in any of these articles has there even been a comment made by the US government. If you are gonna report on something, at least put the correct viewpoint on it. All these "confirmation" articles are just articles respinning the story made by Sanger.

As for it's validity, could be true, could be false. But i definitely don't like the way it's being told. It's more akin to being told a fantasy novel then an actual news report. They don't even have quotes from their sources stated specifically. The entire story is told in a mix of imagination and (possible) facts which aren't clear.

Re:Admits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should open your eyes a bit before going off on rants?

Re:Bad Idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't kind of a bad idea to deliberately mess up controlling computers in a nuclear plant?

The only thing deliberately messed up were the speed controllers on the centrifuges which were enriching Uranium, and the 'messed up' meant that the speed would very subtly oscillate in speed to mess up the enrichment process.

There is no part of that which could cause a meltdown.

Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me google that for you.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/11/bomb-kills-iranian-nuclear-scientist

USA/Isreal admitted to creating "such software"?

[wile_e_wonka]

And once a country admits that it's created such software, publicly deflecting such blame gets a lot harder.

The link leads to another /. article, which leads to another, etc, until it eventually lands at this NY Times article.

This article is not an admission by anyone regarding Stuxnet, Flame, or anything else. It just allegedly quotes a bunch of anonymous sources about supposed top secret information.

I promise I don't work for the federal government.

Re:Blame someone else for incompetance

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You are the dumbest person alive.
2) No it doesn't.
3) That doesn't matter at all.

Here is how it works, try to pay attention. A device called a PLC is connected to a device called a drive via copper wires. The drive is connected to a motor, which is connected to a gearbox, which spins the centrifuge. The drive varies the frequency of the electricity going to the motor and thereby varies the speed at which the motor turns (and thus the centrifuge). The PLC contains ladder logic which governs the speed reference it sends to the drive. So, the PLC controls the speed at which the centrifuge turns.

As it comes out of the box, the PLC contains no ladder logic at all. In order to control anything, one must load ladder logic into it. Now, here is where your stupidity prevents you from being qualified to jabber on about this: you can't load ladder logic into the PLC using QNX. You can''t develop the ladders on QNX. QNX cannot communicate with the PLC in any way at all except to read and write to its data tables using interfaces defined by the PLC vendor. In Stuxnet's case that was Siemens.

The payload of Stuxnet was delivered during the above ladder logic development phase. They'd have sent a destructive speed reference to the centrifuge drives whether then supervisory software was QNX, or Wonderware on Windows, or Citect, or whatever else.

Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran

[crazyjj]

Now hold on... what nuclear scientists died here?

Wow, just get back from an isolated island or something?

One of many, many reports.

Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran

[Tarsir]

The US has opened pandora's box, and there is no going back. You can't control malware the same way you can try to control nuclear weapons. Just wait and see.

I don't think the US opened that box. Organized crime has been deploying malware against individuals and organizations for years. I've been seeing stories on Slashdot about "Chinese Hackers" breeching US governmental and corporate networks for years. With Stuxnet and Flame the US has merely taken what everyone was already doing and done it better.

Re:Oh, stop acting surprised, Iran

[Sack]

Greetings sir, I just want to call you out on the use of Anti-Semitism. It basically means "against Semitic languages", which is more than just Hebrew. It isn't even the #1 Semitic language. Arabic has more speakers. It just sounds silly.

Please call it Anti-Hebrew, Anti-Jewish or Anti-Israel sentiments.

This is a ridiculous, inaccurate attempt at nitpicking BlueStrat's totally valid and appropriate use of the term "anti-semitism." The term "anti-semitism" does NOT "basically mean 'against Semitic languages.'" It means "hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group." We all know that there are other Semitic languages, but the term "anti-semitism" has never commonly been used to describe hostility toward Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, or Chaldean (etc.) languages. I assume you already know this, and are simply trying to come off as erudite and superior. Nice try.

Re:LOL!

[BlueStrat]

One thing you seem to forget, though...Jerusalem is their holy land too.

Bullshit.

Mecca is their holy land.

They only make claims to Jerusalem to justify occupying a Jewish/Christian holy site.

The Muslim kids play soccer at the Dome site.

They don't face Jerusalem when they pray, they face Mecca.

Try learning some history.

Concerning Muslims and the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9CauJP4Pg

Regarding the Arab/Israel/Palestinian conflict:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ByJb7QQ9U

Stop being an apologist for hatred.

Strat

Re:LOL!

[mrsquid0]

No, Jerusalem is considered to the third holiest site in Islam because this is where Muhammad is supposed to have ascended to Heaven from. There is no question that Jerusalem has always been an important city to Islam. And in the early years Muslims did face towards Jerusalem when they prayed. It was changed to Mecca after about 10 or 20 years for reasons that are not (as far as I know) well known.